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Some glossies cover the environment, but cover up their own practices, says Fortune's Marc Gunther.
Read about it in Fortune magazine.
Though not mentioned in the article, Environmental Paper Network member organization Co-op America is helping publishers make the switch to environmentally superior paper. Learn more about the hows and whys at www.magazinepaper.org.
Betsy Rosenberg interviewed Jeff Mendelsohn of New Leaf Paper on her radio program Ecotalk. They discussed the development of the environmental paper market, differences between recycled and post-consumer paper, the potential for agricultural waste paper fiber, chlorine bleaching and corporate commitments to greening their paper purchasing. You can listen to to the interview in two parts at the Ecotalk blog.
The Canadian Boreal Forest is one of the largest sources of fiber for paper products. There is a big effort underway to protect the key habitats and intact forests in the Boreal forest, and to improve forestry practices in the other part of the forest.
Check out the new ad that went into the Globe and Mail (Canada's leading national newspaper) that calls on Premier McGuinty (of Ontario) to protect these forests in Ontario.
There's a cool new kid on the recycled paper products block.
Red River Paper brings you the first inkjet photo paper made from 100% post-consumer recycled fiber. It's also Process Chlorine Free. Red River claims its GreenPix product is an industry first.
Order it online here.
If you've used it or order it and try it, come back and comment on how it worked for you.
An interesting challenge in seeking to move the paper industry towards sustainability is how to translate the public's clearly documented "green" values into actions at the check-out. A key piece of that challenge is for companies, once they have made the laudable step of instituting environmental policies and producing more responsible products to do a better job of marketing those products with as much savvy as they do the rest of there line. For example, why is it so hard to find the 100% recycled paper in an office supply store, even after the company has invested and committed to selling it? And why do consumer's seem to let their stated values slide once they walk through the doors and start putting things in their basic? A recent blog post by Joel Makower discusses such questions and offers some insights.
Despite a surge (though not an invasion) of corporate environmental practices, companies seem to be having trouble convincing American consumers that their environmental commitments and deeds are worth buying into. And despite consumers' apparently overwhelming concerns about climate change and the fate of the earth, they don't seem to be doing a very good job of translating those concerns in the marketplace.
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We all love forests. Today, forest protection advocates at Dogwood Alliance shined a spotlight on health and beauty products that are traditionally associated with Valentine’s Day and asked industry giants Procter & Gamble, Unilever, and Revlon to love forests too and reduce their excessive paper packaging.
Proctor & Gamble, Unilever and Revlon are three of the biggest health and beauty companies using excessive packaging originating from Southern forests—forests with more types of plants and animals to love than almost anywhere in the world. Excessive packaging of beauty products is just plain ugly, and destructive too.
Dogwood Alliance called on Proctor & Gamble, Unilever and Revlon to reduce the amount of paper in packaging, increase post-consumer recycled fiber used in packaging, and ensure that their paper products are not coming from endangered forests.
The message is simple - forests shouldn’t be chopped down, chipped up, made into packaging and tossed in the landfill. There are simple solutions that can transform the packaging industry.
To learn more about the issue, visit the Dogwood Alliance website.
To send your own message to Procter & Gamble, Unilever, and Revlon, go here.
More information is available on the Dogwood Alliance blog.
There's still a long way to go before paper production in the United States finds help with its environmental and economic sustainability through incorporation of hemp fiber, but a step in that direction recently occurred as last week North Dakota issued the first the licences in the nation to grow industrial hemp.
From VoteHemp.org: Much of the energy and chemical intensive method for pulp processing is related to the removal of lignin, which bind the cellulose together. While lignin content of wood runs as high as 23-34% and rice and kenaf straw provide lignin at 9-15%, industrial hemp can be as low as 3%, enhancing the environmentally friendly aspects of non-wood paper production. Lower lignin content also generally corresponds to higher proportions of cellulose. Wood fibers are less than 50% cellulose while hemp (core) contains up to 77% cellulose, making it valuable pulping material.
The controversy over Kleenex manufacturer Kimberly-Clark escalated today as activists staged a sit-in at the American Company's Canadian headquarters in Toronto, Ontario. It is the latest of a series of confrontations with Kimberly-Clark in Europe, the
Photos, Video, and more background information can be found at www.kleercut.net
....for publishing an excellent article today on the problem of the catalog deluge that can be an outrageous nightmare to escape. Anyone with a mailbox or a po box knows what I'm talking about, the onslaught of unsolicited mail, including catalog upon catalog, that it seems impossible to get off of the list for. Sometimes you even get multiples of the same one!
Suzanne, a special reporter to the Wall Street Journal writes, "Six weeks ago, we contacted five major catalog merchants to request they stop our catalogs." Her journey wasn't easy, and its still not over. It requires a subscription to read the article, so I won't bother with the link, but kudos to the wall street journal for encouraging catalog companies to reduce the burden and waste of catalog excess.
There are things you can do about it:
1. Find that 1-800 number on your catalog you don't buy from and call and ask to be removed.
2. Contact the Direct Marketing Association to get your name off many of the lists
3. Subscribe to a service such as www.greendimes.org or www.41pounds.org or www.stopthejunkmail.com
4. Support the Center for a New American Dream's Do Not Junk Campaign to create a free national registry modeled after the Do Not Call List
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