Paper: It’s Not Just From Trees Anymore!
We probably come into contact with paper and paper products more often than any other material throughout our lives. Humans have been using paper since ancient times, developing it over the years to adapt to different cultures, materials, and uses. Today, paper makes up 35% of our waste stream, but only 48% of the paper products we use is recovered for recycling. That means over half the paper we use is filling up our landfills and rotting in our trash. This is a very sad fact when you consider that paper is one of the easiest materials to recycle and reuse.
As our use of paper increases, so does our need to think carefully about our paper choices and seek out the most sustainable options. Luckily, the recycled paper industry is coming of age, and there are many alternatives to virgin paper (i.e. paper made from trees). As a graphic designer, I use paper to communicate my clients' messages (when I can't convince them to do so over the web, that is) through brochures, invitations, posters, business cards, and so on. Choosing the right paper for the project is a big part of the design process, and I make sure that no trees are cut down for my projects by making use of the many tree-free and recycled paper options out there.
With so many sustainable paper choices out there, all with varying degrees of environmental impact, it can be difficult to choose what type to use. Thankfully, there are many resources available online to make this choice easier. One of my favorites is renourish. This site is a complete guide for designers who want to become more sustainable and includes information on which types of paper are most environmentally-friendly and what to look for when choosing a sustainable paper. There are many factors to consider, such as recycled content, how the paper was processed or bleached, and what materials were used to make it. According to the renourish paper guide:
The best solution for paper selection is:
- 100% Post-Consumer Waste (PCW)
- Processed Chlorine Free (PCF)
- Uncoated
- Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Certified
- Made by renewable energy sources (wind, geothermal, solar, etc.)
- Treeless paper like bamboo, hemp and kenaf (if readily available locally)
Celery Design Collaborative has a very comprehensive list of sustainable papers available from a variety of companies, including paper from each category listed above. Conservatree's choosing paper guide begins with a very good recommendation:
The first step in choosing paper is to evaluate how to reduce paper use so that you're only using what's truly needed.
Reducing paper use is probably the most important step we can take to save trees and resources and prevent waste. In the office, this means printing on both sides of each page, reusing all the paper we can, and simply not printing as much stuff. For instance, I send all my invoices as PDFs attached to an e-mail. The paperless office may not be a reality yet, but we can certainly move towards it by using digital documents over paper ones.
Of course, using paper is pretty unavoidable sometimes. By making sustainable paper choices and reusing and recycling the paper we use, we can be responsible paper consumers.
There are many paper companies that offer eco-friendly papers, whether they be recycled, processed chlorine free, made from renewable fibers other than trees, or synthetic. Neenah Paper offers several sustainable options, including Neenah Green Papers and the Environment line of papers. They even have an Environmental Savings Calculator so you can see how many resources you would save by choosing a greener paper. Mohawk Fine Papers also offers recycled choices and many papers produced using wind power. They also have an Environmental Calculator on their web site. SMART Papers is another large paper company with high environmental standards. Yupo and Polyart provide synthetic tree-free papers.
While the big paper companies often dedicate only part of their entire product line to sustainable papers, there are smaller companies who produce only sustainable paper. EcoPaper produces papers and stationery that utilize not only recycled paper fibers, but natural tree-free fibers from bananas, coffee, lemons, and even cigars! Green Field Paper Company produces paper that is made with a mix of recycled fibers and renewables like hemp, which is stronger and can be recycled more times than regular paper. They also make paper out of recycled junk mail and coffee, along with some beautiful cards called Grow-A-Note that have seeds embedded in the paper fibers so that the cards can simply be planted after use. Vision Paper produces paper from kenaf, a quick growing plant with a high fiber yield.
From regular office paper to fancy cardstock, there are countless options for the environmentally-conscious paper user. Sustainable papers are competitive with virgin paper in price, brightness, texture, and variety. I hope you'll consider all the environmental effects of your paper choice for your next printed project. With all these green paper choices, I often wonder why virgin paper still exists at all!
Tags: Consumer Products, Graphic Design, graphic+design, green+paper, paper, recycled, tree-free+paper
- Uncategorized
February 17th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
The paper we use in our lives and our own design companies, doesn't compare to the amount of paper the magazine and catalog industries gobbles up in the course of a normal business day.
There are now quite a few organizations re-inventing publishing in that regard, making considerable strides. You can find a link to them from my Lü website under paper project.
The next challenge for me, is the adult industry. Why? Because it's the one that got away… strangely, because environmental organizations are by definition unenthusiastic about adult fare, rather feminist… unimpressed by wanton display of the flesh for mere lower chakra stimulus, we've forgotten that almost a third of all magazines sold at the newsstands are, cough, girlie magazines, and they all suck up more virgin paper stock than their fair share.
We have an amazing opportunity here, now that Penthouse magazine is under new ownership, a woman publisher, who wants to take the magazine in a more metrosexual direction, to impress on the whole of the men's magazine publishing industry the necessity to change their printing practices to reflect the ecological and moral needs of the day.
Plus the Pets I'm sure, since most models these days are quite tuned into environmental issues, would welcome such a switch, feel better about posing for the magazine, doing a good deed.
This goes for Playboy as well, which has been playing Johnny-Come-Lately to the tree-free paper revolution, this quite surprising considering how progressive the magazine used to be, the chronicle of the sexual revolution. But we forget that in those days, it was Robert Anton Wilson editing at the helm.
So join us in our efforts… let the men's mags know, they don't have to feel left out… that there are some of us here, who don't discriminate because their raison d'etre is gaia made flesh.
February 19th, 2007 at 12:53 am
Thank you for collecting these links. Many graphic designers are not willing to do the research to direct printers to use these papers. This will make it much easier.
February 20th, 2007 at 12:56 am
Thanks for the comments. Magazines are certainly main consumers of paper, and I hope to see some change in that field. I’m hoping that graphic designers in the publishing industry will begin asking their companies where their paper comes from and push for more sustainable options. I realize designers aren’t always the ones who get to specify paper, but being educated is the first step to speaking up and having a say in the paper our companies or publications use.
As for where recycled and sustainable papers are manufactured, it really varies by company. Some of the larger ones probably do manufacture paper off-shore, but you’d have to check with each company to be sure. I hadn’t considered where the papers were produced for this article, but it’s definitely something to consider as shipping and fuel usage contribute to the sustainability of the paper. Thank you for bringing this important factor up!
I checked on one of the smaller sustainable paper companies, Green Field Paper, and their papers are produced in the U.S.
~Megan Prusynski
my site | volksvegan adventures | unplug
February 23rd, 2007 at 5:22 pm
I just wanted to add another sustainable paper company to the list that I had neglected to mention (with so many great options out there, it’s hard to keep track of them all). New Leaf paper company makes a variety of recycled papers and now produces all of their paper with renewable energy! There is more information on their site: http://www.newleafpaper.com
Thank you New Leaf for making sustainability a priority!
I also noticed that one of my favorite magazines, Adbusters, uses New Leaf paper. Now, if only we could convince other publications to follow suit!
~Megan Prusynski
my site | volksvegan adventures | unplug
October 2nd, 2007 at 9:35 pm
http://www.greenpapercompany.com
New recycled paper company launching in January 08!
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Hi.
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