"Its the right thing to do for the world"

Today, Nordstrom Inc., the Seattle-based chain of 98 department stores, said it plans to begin using 30% recycled paper for all its catalogs and annual reports. The company also announced it will use paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

"It's something we believe in very strongly,'' Linda Finn, executive vice president of marketing at Nordstrom, said in an interview yesterday. "It's the right thing to do for the world.''

Kudos to Nordstrom. Read more about the announcement here.

Saving the (Paper) Planet

We've got big plans here at the non-profit Environmental Paper Network, including continual improvement to the Paper Planet. Over the next year, if we are successful in fundraising, we hope to improve the quality and volume of cutting edge news on people, paper, and ecology provided on the Paper Planet. Plus, the Environmental Paper Network is working to coordinate many other projects that help companies and consumers make the choice of paper made beautiful, that keeps the earth beautiful. Learn more about the EPN and its members at our homepage.

We could sure use your help. Keeping the compact flourescent lights on and putting the stamps on those 100% post-consumer recycled, chlorine-free envelopes requires the support of generous, conscientous souls like yourself.

Please consider donating today. Your donation is 100% tax-deductible and 100% good karma. If you've got two minutes, watch our brief video asking for your support. And thanks for reading the Paper Planet....

More on junk mail

Paretorules.com blog has more on junk mail impacts.

Zeitgeist

A story by Sherry Chiger in the Multichannel Merchant (a catalog industry information source) recently said:

"...a renewed emphasis on the environment and sustainability is part of the zeitgeist."

She noted that Victoria's Secret, Williams-Sonoma and Dell have recently moved to green their catalogs. But she also discusses a critical issue for catalogs: reducing the amount of paper they use, eliminating paper catalogs in favor of online sales and elminating print catalogs altogether. Some developments:

-- The Disney catalog has been eliminated in favor of onleine sales.
-- Sharper Image has reported that it will decrease its catalog circulation by 30% in 2006.

A related article from Chief Marketer report entitled “Precision Marketing Is a Green Initiative,” by Jeff Zabin discusses paper reduction as an important environmental initiative.

Some interesting quotes from his article:

"Consider: This year alone, marketers in the U.S. will have sent out more than 114 billion pieces of direct mail, including catalogs, credit-card solicitations, and coupon packets. This represents an increase of 15% from five years ago. The cost of producing and distributing all these marketing materials? Approximately $59.6 billion—more than five times Wal-Mart’s net income. And that’s up more than $4 billion from last year.

And yet, as every marketing professional knows, most of that mail is thrown out nearly as quickly as it arrives. In fact, according to the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), only 2.15% of mailed ads lead to a sale—or, for that matter, to any type of response from recipients. The Environmental Protection Agency reports that in a single year Americans dispose of more than 3.6 million tons of what can truly be labeled junk mail.

Beyond getting plowed into landfills, where it might take a millennium to decompose, the 97.85% of direct mail pieces that would seem to serve no other purpose than to keep marketing vendors and the U.S. Postal Service busy obviously have an enormous environmental impact. By some estimates, more than 100 million trees are needed to produce them. The paper pulp processing requires some 50 billion gallons of water. And then there’s the toxic ink and nonrenewable energy that goes into printing, sorting, and distribution."

More interesting still, Zabin notes that the Direct Marketing Association's justifications and pronouncements on the green-ness of the junk mail and catalog industries "a dubious claim, in my opinion, based on what I’ve seen, and it represents a somewhat feeble attempt to respond to the consumer rallying cry around environmental responsibility in light of the fact that more than half of all direct mail is tossed into the wastepaper basket without so much as even being opened."

I guess there is reason to hope that there is a new zeitgeist in this industry.

Recycled Paper by Catalog Success Magazine

Catalog Success magazine had a recent article about easy steps for cataloguers to take to green themselves by James Maioho. A few choice quotes:

"If you’re a large cataloger, act on this changing climate now, plain and simple. Organizations like Forest Ethics will be on your tail soon enough if they’re not already."

[...]

"Regardless of your size, familiarize yourself with the FSC and find out what it means to be certified."

[...]

"Familiarize yourself with the ancillary issues such as “chain of custody,” “Boreal Forest” and other key issues."

That's good advice. But cataloguers and companies need to move beyond just seeking a green image... and just get green!

Oscar Gossip

Ecorazzi blog has a post about how the Oscars went green this year and talks about the paper they used. Kudos from me too to NRDC for their work on the event.

Don't Judge a Magazine By Its Cover

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.

Talking Paper

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.

New Ad to Protect the Boreal Forest

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.

New - Recycled InkJet Photo Paper

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.

Shopping the Talk

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.

Joel says:

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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Sometimes Beauty is Really Only Skin Deep

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.

Video Update on Greenpeace Protest Yesterday

Small Step 4 US Industrial Hemp

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.

More Controversy for Kimberly-Clark

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 United States, and Canada in an ongoing international campaign to get the world’s largest producer of tissue products to stop using virgin pulp from clearcut ancient forests to make its well known Kleenex brand. As of this morning, four Greenpeace activists have locked themselves down in the offices of the company demanding that it stop destroying Canada’s Boreal Forest. Others are broadcasting chainsaw noises and spreading woodchips in the corridors to further disrupt operations at the American company’s Canadian headquarters.

Photos, Video, and more background information can be found at www.kleercut.net