Groundwood Dilemma

It's not easy to meet everyone's objectives on environmental protection as you plan paper purchases. Carbon footprint? Reduction of landfills? Recycled content? Sustainability of forest products?

What are the best practices in today's pressurized world of coated paper buying and printing for catalog and periodical publishers? Catalog producers today are weathering a growing barrage of criticism over environmental impacts of mass mailings. As a number of states weigh imposing “do-not-mail” registries, the challenges printers face could outweigh concerns over postage hikes.

Environmental advocates, sometimes misguided, are literally forcing catalogers to use recycled-content grades. This happens even when more economical ultra-lightweight grades (under 32-lb.) might offer a smaller all-around carbon footprint. (Carbon footprint, in its simplest terms, refers to the total energy usage and resultant carbon dioxide output of a product.) It can be demonstrated that some ultra-lightweight grades, while derived from less environmentally palatable, non-recycled virgin fibers, use less energy in toto to purchase, run and ship than heavier recycled stocks. These papers are readily available, in forms that deliver superior on-press and reproduction performance.

On other fronts, catalogers may have hit a soft spot in the market in procurement. The relatively weak demand for coated web grades over the last six to nine months has relaxed certain price points for recycled content grades, so it really is a good time to buy.

So far, publishers are not as pressured by environmental watchdogs. They seem to understand the carbon footprint argument and apply it to their critics rather effectively. Their broad movement to adopt use of Sustainable Forest Initiative (SFI)-focused directives, in tandem with the mills, have precluded much of the pressure heaped on catalogers. Or perhaps periodical publishers are further along in the green marketing wave. It might also be because magazines arrive by request, while catalogs simply arrive.

Commercial printing plants are adopting a mixed bag of recycled content and SFI and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) focuses. Printers select papers based on customer needs and price—probably the simplest technique of all.

About 60% of coated ground (5.1 million tons) contains 30% post-consumer waste (i.e., not scraps picked up from the paper mill floor but retrieved from waste streams). That's about 20% of just over 1 million tons of paper consumed in the U.S. in 2007.

Using recycled fiber helps the environment generally, of course, by reducing land fills and trash hauling. Most fine paper products contain at least 10% post-consumer recycled fiber, and most recycled content grades have little adverse effect on print quality.

“Customers want the highest recycled-content paper that doesn't affect print quality and runnability,” says Paul Lukaszewski, Stora Enso manager of marketing services. “We see recycled content's threshold to be 30%.” Lukaszewski notes that because recycled fibers deteriorate each time they are processed, it is important that coated papers have some level of virgin fiber content to maintain quality and strength.

Paper mills process pulp from the municipal and industrial solid waste streams and do an incredible job in making it usable—removing the ink and other dark materials to make it bright and strong.

“It really isn't necessary to make big technical changes in running recycled content grades,” says Dean Powell of Unisource. “The paper doesn't need to be 100% recycled in most cases (which would be a challenge) since 30% post-consumer fiber seems to be the new standard for 'green' paper. The paper is a bit more expensive than virgin but not significantly. The web press may need to be tweaked slightly but to no great extent. The finishing process may need to be minimally adjusted as well (stitching, folding, stapling, etc.). Every product is different, so it's always good to run tests first before running anything new.”

Why is recycled paper more expensive? After all, it uses old fibers. The energy required to use recycled paper is enormous. Collecting, sorting, baling and shipping paper to remote locations, or even locally, processing the fibers into something usable (harder every time the fiber is used), integrating it into papermaking and delivering it—all contribute to cost. More and more, the question is about sustainability, or what the carbon footprint really is with recycled content papers. Powell continues, “Although lagging behind sheets, the demand for recycled content in coated web grades is increasing. In tandem with recycled content, printers and end-users are requesting FSC, SFI or PEFC [Program for the Endorsement of Forest Certification] certified product.”

Unisource is in the process of getting all its warehouses FSC- and SFI-certified. “Some are already there,” Powell reports. “Within the next few years, I wouldn't be surprised if all coated paper had some recycled content or an environmental certification attached to it. Now it's a differentiator. It will be an industry standard in the near future.”

Lukaszewski adds, “Many companies are embracing the use of recycled paper and are also incorporating the recycling message into their overall sustainability marketing efforts. However, we must keep in mind the carbon footprint of the recycled waste-stream. Waste paper typically has to be hauled a significant distance from urban centers to processing locations, which uses fossil fuels.”

Unisource distributes Stora Enso recycled content grades, including the Arbor grade, which contains 30% post-consumer recycled fiber and is FSC chain-of-custody certified. Other coated web brands at Unisource with at least 30% post-consumer fiber are Utopia 2 XG from Appleton Coated and Nature and Nature + from West Linn. There are many 10% post-consumer web products on the market.

Verso Paper (formerly International Paper) produced a white paper on its strategy for meeting the environmental challenge presentedto publishers and catalog houses. Verso says in a statement that it “supports the use of recycled paper because we believe that recovered fiber is a valuable resource that can supplement virgin fiber.... However, using increasingly higher percentages of recovered fiber to produce recycled-content paper is not always the best environmental alternative.... Contrary to popular belief, the key environmental benefit of recycling is not in saving trees, which are among the few truly renewable resources on earth, but in diverting as much usable paper from landfills as possible. By diverting usable fiber from landfills, we not only reclaim a valuable raw material but also reduce greenhouse gas emissions (methane) that result when land-filled paper products degrade over time.”

Verso joins Time Warner in its ReMix program—recycling magazines in major metropolitan areas of the U.S. It also supports the Direct Marketing Assn. and Magazine Publishers Assn. in their programs to educate and alert consumers on recycling printed products.

UPM, SCA, West Linn, Domtar and many others also take very scientific approaches to the issue of recycled versus sustainability. Check their Websites for more information: http://w3.upm-kymmene.com, www.scapackaging.com, wlinpco.com and domtar.com