by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
The paper industry's total environmental footprint is estimated to be three times higher than that of the aviation industry and Europeans use four times as much paper as the global average.
These figures have led more than 50 European NGOs to join forces to urge individuals and businesses to shrink their paper use.
The Shrink campaign, launched recently, is working with twenty major European companies to help them reduce the amount of paper that they are using unnecessarily.
People are also being encouraged to pledge to cut their consumption on the campaign's website through simple actions such as signing off junk mail and using double-sided printing when possible.
While signing off junk mail is supposed to work I also know of people who have tried doing that and, for some reason, their junk mail volume has tripled. Mind you, this is in the USA.
While it is annoying to receive all that junk mail, and in the UK it is actually the Royal Mail that is one of the main culprits of the junk mail in that they carry the “to the householder” letter and it is part of Royal Mail's advertising revenue; that is to say that Royal Mail gets paid for every letter they shove through your mailbox, I have found that I just make use of all the paper that comes in – amongst those are paper press releases for instance – and reuse the paper as and where possible, especially if there is a plain back. This reuse does not just include using the paper as scrap paper and drafts paper but up to and including printing our business cards on them. Practical recycling, thank you!
The network of NGOs, known as the European Environmental Paper Network (EEPN), said using less paper will have a wider impact than simply reducing the number of trees cut down to make paper. And, theoretically, the less trees cut down to make paper the more trees there will be to reduce the CO2 impact. However, it would be nice if that would work like that. The greatest problem is, though, that the trees that are there, many of them at least, have been planted for the paper industry.
On the other hand is the fact that the paper industry consumes a huge amount of water and a huge amount of energy, so the climate change impacts of this are also staggering. Estimates are that the paper industry globally is responsible for about three times the emissions to that of the aviation industry. Many of us in the environmental lobby all get very upset about the impact of people flying everywhere, but most of us have not even as much as calculated the impact of something like paper, which we use every day, and which many of us in the “movement” even often do not use efficiently.
Virgin paper can use between 6.3kg (13.9 pounds) and 9.8kg (21.6 pounds) of CO2 equivalent to produce each kilogram (2.2 pounds) of paper and its production can also have huge social consequences for people living in the developed world.
However, having said this, a great majority of paper is derived, as wood source, from FSC approved sustainable forests, many of which only exists because of the paper industry. This is something that we must bear in mind while we advocate the reduction of the use, or better the inefficient use, of paper. If we would stop paper production from wood then, of this we can be sure, those forests will no longer be managed and may be felled and then the land used for other purposes. Purposes that may have a much greater impact on the environment and the climate.
Alongside the global Shrink campaign, the EEPN in the U.K. is targeting some of the country's biggest paper consumers, such as banks, magazine publishers, catalogue companies and supermarkets, to encourage them to use less paper in packaging, mailings and publications.
In today's world, with the great majority of us all having computers, personally I find it ludicrous that so many catalogues and other such publications are still produced on real paper and mailed out rather than in virtual paper, as PDFs, and then burned onto CD or stuck on a USB stick.
This is the same with press releases that I receive, whether on a trade or other show or from the companies direct. It is all too often on paper and then, very often on coated paper. Such coated paper is basically laminated with a very thin film of plastic that then makes the paper basically non-recyclable.
The EEPN said they hoped organizations would realize that the move could benefit not just the environment, but their bottom line too.
Paper that is used inefficiently is costing a awful lot of money to do that and companies will realize, if pointed into the right direction, that this will affect their bottom line, ultimately.
© M Smith (Veshengro), June 2008
Shrink paper use Europe is being urged
