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Published in Fall 2005
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How green is your paper?
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By Joshua Ostroff
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© Cascades
North America consumed 30.2 million tonnes of printing and writing papers in 2004, compared to compared to 11.0 million tonnes of newsprint. Canada is the world’s largest market pulp supplier, accounting for 18 percent of global capacity.
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Paper may come in every hue imaginable, but the color causing the most controversy is green—as in environmentally-friendly.
Though North American governments and many private sector companies are trying to lessen their environmental impact through procurement policies, progress is being hampered by differing ideas of what exactly constitutes “green paper.”
“Right now everybody defines green paper based on their own concern for the environment,” explains Chantal Line Carpentier, head of the CEC’s Environment, Economy and Trade program. “If we can agree on a common definition, and policies are written based on that definition, then there are environmental benefits for everybody as well as economic benefits for the companies.”
To facilitate this process, the CEC is sponsoring a meeting in November to build consensus on standards amongst the stakeholders, including government representatives, paper producers, environmental certifiers and nongovernmental organizations.
Tool of the Trade |
The hardest part of making an organization more environmentally-friendly has always been how to go about it, but with Eco-S.A.T it’s as easy as a mouse click.
The North American Green Purchasing Initiative’s Ecological Self-Assessment Tool is a simple web site <www.cec.org/eco-sat> incorporating a best practices guide along with a well-developed checklist.
“It’s designed to help professional purchasers evaluate their organizations environmental procurement initiatives, identify opportunities for improvement and benchmark themselves,” says Madeleine Plouffe, who developed the tool for the CEC.
“Greening your purchases doesn’t mean they’re going to be more expensive. That’s really important and something we’re working to get the business world to understand.”
The site is geared to help all levels of government and large organizations like hospitals, universities, and corporations with the resources they need. In particular, it provides ideas by showing what other organizations and companies have done, including Home Depot’s “Wood Purchasing Policy” which requires their wood be certified by the Forestry Stewardship Council.
The Eco-S.A.T will continue to evolve, with additional best practices as well as an interactive component that will allow users to store scores in a database for comparison with other companies. But it’s already helping consumers harness their purchasing power to lessen their impact on the environment and human health. |
Currently, the greenness of paper is certified by third-party organizations, each with their own criteria. Environment Canada’s privately run Environmental Choice Program has moved toward analyzing the life cycle of a product rather than just focusing on recycled content, making its EcoLogo certification one of the most stringent. Producers must demonstrate a reduction in air and water emissions, waste production and energy use as well as an efficient use of fiber (but without specifying a percentage of recycled content).
Third-party certifiers in the United States include: Green Seal, which requires 30 percent post-consumer content and no chlorine bleach; the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which focuses on sustainable forestry and gives its “recycled” seal only to 100 percent recycled paper; and the Chlorine Free Products Association (CFPA) who claim the highest standards of all.
“We want to tie everything together—water, energy, carbon gas releases, good forestry—the whole ball of wax,” says CFPA spokesperson Archie Beaton. “I’m hoping we’re going to achieve a consensus that can be shared by all three countries that will lead the industry away from the production of harmful toxics. We should set a target for these companies to shoot for, not something that is already done. If you want to be environmentally-preferred, you don’t start at the bottom rung.”
The most effective way to create this market has proven to be through government green procurement policies, though currently there is little synchronization between such policies at the provincial, state and municipal government levels.
In Canada, the federal government will soon be launching an across-the-board policy to govern all federal purchasing. Meanwhile, the Mexican environment ministry has taken the lead on setting its own purchasing strategy and is conducting a life-cycle analysis of some of their products, though they lack a third-party certification system.
“Our federal government has been doing green purchasing and is trying to make everyone know it is good to buy recycled paper,” says Nydia Suppen, director of Centro de Análisis de Ciclo de Vida y Diseño Sustentable. “Perhaps some companies are also considering buying office supplies that are so-called green, but I don’t think we’re at a level where everyone is aware of the benefits of using paper that is better for the environment. Recycling is still new in Mexico.”
In the United States, President Bill Clinton issued a 1993 executive order requiring the federal government to purchase paper with 20 percent post-consumer recycled content, a number raised five years later to 30 percent.
“And that’s as high as we’re going,” says Dana Arnold, Chief of Staff at the US Office of the Federal Environmental Executive. “[The paper industry] doesn’t like having a post-consumer content percentage but they’ve learned to live with it. If they had their way, they’d allow the marketplace to take care of everything.”
Arnold notes there are numerous other environmental concerns—including the “thorny” issue of chlorine used in de-inking recycled paper as well as sustainable forestry—but there are no plans to add any requirements beyond recycling.
She adds that other factors may play a role at the state, municipal or corporate level but the federal government would rather everyone define green paper for themselves, especially given concerns over international competition in the paper industry.
“You’ve got to do something that is cost effective for the mills if you’re going to create a market,” she says. “Simply raising a number is not going to create a market; what it’s going to create is boutiques.”
Not everyone agrees with that assumption. A progressive company like Cascades—famous for providing 100 percent recycled paper for Harry Potter’s Canadian print editions—traces their current boom to Clinton’s executive order and its voluntary adoption by other levels of government and industry.
“A lot of the success we have had is a result of end users like the American government that were encouraged to include recycled content in their products,” says Cascades’ Gerry Zampini.
He would also like to see a common standard between the certifiers. To address the differing demands of buyers, Cascades currently meets—and pays annual fees for—certification from Environmental Choice, CFPA and the FSC.
“I think all the companies who certify should get together and agree amongst themselves on one basic certification process and standard by which they will qualify green paper,” he says. “Then there’d be no other loopholes. It would just help the environmental cause.”
Mark Hubert, director of the Forest Products Association of Canada’s Sustainable Forest Management division agrees that “in a perfect world there would be one system” but cites differing consumer demands as making this impractical.
He adds that while the pulp and paper industry is moving towards greener production methods, they want the criteria to vary based on a consumer context, rather than being locked into specific thresholds, particularly concerning the amount of recycled content.
“No, we don’t have a threshold set for that and I don’t think it’s the most effective way to ensure a ‘green’ paper,” he says. “The discussion needs to be more focused around what the proper mechanism for defining or evaluating what environmentally-preferable paper is, as opposed to talking about numbers. Increasing a number might look like a good thing but that’s a simplistic way to determine whether or not you’re having an impact.”
Though everyone seems to want to move forward, balancing the needs of conservationists and industry will be a challenge.
“The producers are not going to get in the business of doing something if it’s not profitable to do so,” admits Carpentier. “But if they all define it the same across North America then you can create a demand for the product, making it more economically feasible for both producers and buyers.”
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