Moral Fiber

Lately, just about every printing industry-related article includes at least one reference to environmental protection. The terms “green,” “eco-friendly” and “sustainability” already seem overused and slightly annoying. At the same time, these are major issues with tremendous economic implications for the printing industry, and they—and the language used to discuss them—cannot be ignored.

Regarding raw materials, paper, both its manufacturing and usage, has arguably the most serious ramifications for the green movement. As a result, this year’s paper report focuses on recycled paper stocks and other alternatives, with paper experts addressing issues such as availability, content, pricing and performance.

Supply and Demand

Six years ago, anxiety over insufficient capacity was preventing many major purchasers from entering the recycled paper market. Large purchases, it was feared, could max out the available paper supply, deplete recovered paper sources and drive up prices.

Victoria Mills, project manager for Boston-based Alliance for Environmental Innovation, contributed to a report appearing in the Feb. 2002 edition of Resource Recycling titled “Recycled Paper: Plenty available, now let’s all use it.” Mills and co-authors Gerard Gleason and Susan Kinsella asserted that, despite mill closures, significant industry capacity exists to support large and rapid increases in the use of recycled printing and writing papers. Furthermore, broad and lasting customer acceptance will follow as end-users discover recycled paper performs just as well as virgin paper—and at comparable prices.

(Virgin Paper comes directly from trees and contains the strongest and purest fiber. Its first-generation status means virgin paper has not undergone prior printing. The reusable fiber content found in recycled paper may include pre-consumer waste, post consumer waste, totally recycled fiber or various blends of each.)

In discussing the status of recycled paper in the marketplace today, Mills again noted recycled paper options are frequently available at competitive prices. “The exact price compared to virgin paper will, of course, depend on the grade of paper, but with some grades, recycled options are routinely available at price parity.” She went on to say that Kinsella’s company, San Francisco-based Conservatree, provides a listing service on its website (www.conservatree.com) where visitors can review all the different brands and paper grades featuring recycled content. “For instance, you can look up coated, uncoated, office paper, box board, even tissue—it’s a vast resource for purchasers,” she added.

“I was recently in conversation with people at Co-op America. [The organization] sponsors the Aveda Environmental Award, which recognizes the efforts of magazine publishers to reduce their environmental footprints, and we discuss[ed] some of the work publishers are doing with printers in switching to recycled content,” continued Mills. “There is also the Green Press Initiative which works with book publishers. Recently, Random House and Scholastic both publicly announced they were switching to recycled paper. Within the catalog industry, Forest Ethics worked with Victoria’s Secret and Williams-Sonoma to get them to us[e] recycled paper, and now L.L. Bean is using recycled paper. So, [recycled paper] is really in the mainstream right now, and there are huge environmental benefits that result.”

Mills explained the Alliance for Environmental Innovation offers a paper calculator available at (www.papercalculator.org) for those who want a better understanding of just what some of those environmental benefits might be. “It’s an interesting resource that allows you to enter a specific quantity of paper—say you need a thousand pounds of coated paper for use in an annual report—and see what the benefit would be of using 30 percent or 50 percent recycled content compared to virgin in terms of trees saved, energy, water, solid waste and many different environmental parameters. This is a great tool that can give the answers to those questions,” she commented. “Clearly, there are measurable environmental benefits in making the right paper choices.”

Rock, Paper, Scissors

Sometimes, eco-friendly can have nothing at all to do with recycled fibers. Margie Dana, founder of the Boston Print Buyers Association, is excited about lines of tree-free papers made from stones.

She recently showcased a few varieties in her Print Tips column (www.bostonprintbuyers.com), including Paperocks, in Burlingame, Calif., TerraSkin of New York and ViaStone Paper, Brea, Calif. “Their composition is primarily calcium carbonate, which is a chemical compound commonly found in rock, such as limestone,” said Dana. “These unique papers are approximately 75 percent calcium carbonate and about 25 percent nontoxic resin. ... And, because [the papers] don’t use water, [they don’t] cause water pollution and don’t release any toxic gases.”

Dana reported that all three papers share the same aesthetics of traditional matte coated paper, and can be used on sheet and web offset presses, as well as gravure, screen, flexography and rotary printers. “But, so far, the paper is not compatible with digital presses or laser/inkjet printers,” she noted. “The paper is tear resistant and water resistant. It doesn’t absorb ink like traditional paper, so less ink is used—20 percent to 30 percent less, in fact. I have a few samples of the paper, and all I can tell you is how it feels in my hand: creamy, very smooth and quite cool to the touch. You definitely know you’re handling something different.”

Throughout the industry, various sustainability initiatives are obviously underway. Going forward, the real challenge will not be convincing the marketplace to adopt environmentally correct practices, but disseminating correct information, and advising manufacturers, distributors and end-users of available resources and tools to keep them up to speed.