Surviving the Sustainability Maze

Help them find the way through an often confusing sustainability maze, and you will find that it is so much easier to work with educated clients. Educated clients understand that not every job can be delivered yesterday. Educated clients understand your process and how much work goes into the printing side of it.

Let’s start by clearing up some of the most common confusions:

Virgin vs. recycled. Paper manufacturing largely depends on fiber. Even though there are some niche markets based on tree-free fibers, the majority of printing papers depend on tree fibers. But mills have a choice in the fibers they use. We know that recycled fibers, overall, are more environmentally friendly and, thus, preferable to use. But pay attention. More than once, I have seen paper specifiers spec a sheet that was called out as 100 percent recycled, assuming this automatically meant 100 percent post-consumer waste (PCW).

We all know that it is better to have facts than to assume anything. We want to know how much PCW is really used to make a sheet. Don’t wait until your client asks or after the job has been printed. Have the facts ready ahead of time. As the quality of recycled papers has increased dramatically over the last few years, you will be hard-pressed to tell the difference between a virgin and a recycled sheet. And, with more and more recycled papers being sold, their prices have come down dramatically to compete head-to-head with virgin papers.

Focus on sustainability. As wonderful as recycled options are, we cannot recycle indefinitely. There just is not enough recycled fiber to go around and, subsequently, virgin fibers will remain an important part of the papermaking process.

But we are not just specifying any virgin sheet. Several independent organizations (FSC, SFI, PECF), each with their own focus on sustainability, have made it their aim to ensure that trees are grown, forested and transported in the most environmentally friendly and socially responsible ways. All of them have their own level of certification, a guarantee to you and your clients that the mill’s claim is a viable one. To achieve these certifications, mills have to undergo stringent testing. Needless to say, this process takes several months and does not come cheap. Besides the certification process, the actual pulp is more expensive, too. This is why you will see increased pricing for most of these certified papers.