Last week’s Greenpeace newsletter had another one of their arresting headlines: “Activists are stopping climate destruction now! Early today 13 activists locked down cranes at one of the largest pulp and paper mills in the world.” With the UK still being a major importer of illegal timber and the global pulp and paper industry in the top 5 polluters, we cannot shrug off our industry’s part in this story. 

Let’s look at the impact of print and no better place to start than with paper. No matter what your paper choice is, this will be a big chunk of the footprint for your piece of print. 

Currently the overwhelming trend in sustainable print design is in specifying FSC (Forestry Stewardship Council, www.fsc.org)-accredited papers. This is miles better than a virgin stock (a paper stock with no recycled content) where there is no record of where the wood pulp has originated from – as is being highlighted by the Greenpeace campaign. What this ‘chain of custody’ system does not reflect is the carbon impact of paper, which is important when some FSC pulps are shipped from places like Brazil and ends up being a sizeable chunk of your print’s carbon footprint. By choosing a post-consumer recycled paper stock you can bring down your carbon footprint from between 30% up to a whopping 70%. Imagine the size of the Daily Mirror’s footprint if their newsprint wasn’t from a recycled stock sourced in the UK. 

With this in mind it was interesting but ultimately disappointing to read in last week’s Printweek environmental newsletter that the paper company UPM will be supplying 9 million sheets of copy paper to the United Nation’s Climate Change talks in Copenhagen. My disappointment does not come from the choice of company; UPM’s credentials have rigorous environmental targets. My dismay originates from the type of paper chosen. UPM’s ‘Future’ grade (with a strapline that states ‘the best future ever’) seems to have good creds when it comes to chain of custody, including FSC, PEFC and the EU Eco-labels so no wood pulp from Indonesia. But why, when the eyes of the world watch and scrutinise this conference, would you default back to a virgin paper stock? Surely this would be one place where we could exemplify the great qualities of a paper that has been out in the world before and has returned as a new white (though maybe not ultra blue-white) stock, ready to be recycled into a new stock again. And following this how satisfying would it be to receive a piece of paper knowing that it had been recycled from the past papers of this conference, that had fulfilled its work relaying all the important information with clarity and when it had done its task had been recycled and remade ready for its next important job. Future paper’s specification is literally blinding – “an ultra-smooth, high-white paper for accurate and dazzling colour reproduction” with as far as I can see not a jot of recycled content contained within it.

Here at t.m we are continuously amazed how some of our more enlightened clients that boast extensive environmental management policies do not extend such regulations through to their marketing and print. It may seem to be a small issue swimming among the bigger fish but it’s the one that most will see. It must, more than anything, set the sustainable benchmark as a standard and show that companies hold true to their environmental ambitions even through to their choice of paper. 

Knowing what I do about the energy cost of virgin paper and the potential saving from using a post-consumer stock, and adding concern by campaign groups like Greenpeace, I wonder what kind of message they are sending with this choice. I imagine there are other economics involved here as 9 million A4 sheets constitutes a lot of paper (and water – an average sheet of A4 paper can contain up to 10 litres of the stuff), but is it really crucial to have such a high specification?

In the end it seems to come down to why whiteness is so important. I am left wondering if this paper was chosen as part of a secret plan that renders the conference delegates so blinded by the frightening statistics printed on this ultra white paper stock that they are moved to take immediate and drastic action to halt global melt down. I hope so.