ewaste » Sift Blog

We recently met up with our local Spicers paper rep who gave us all the recycled paper samples available at the moment. She also had this great little booklet called “Paper is the future – Love paper.” Paper is a resource that we consume a lot of and even though it was promoted and touted as the new way to live we have not become a paperless society (with all the new technology). People still print emails (and sometimes you need to), reports, documents, booklets, magazines etc – hundreds of thousands of reams of paper. We love the tactile nature of paper and holding it in your hands. It is also excellent at communicating, educating, motivating and story telling.

As stated in a previous post we use a lot of paper – 945,499 tonnes (221kg per person per year) in the year March 31 2009 (Ministry for Agriculture and Forestry Annual Pulp, Paper and Production)

The pink Spicers booklet talks about sustainable production and that use of paper is good because it comes from a renewable resource and is made from the offcuts of timber not the rounds.  There are standards and accreditations that paper mills can go through (and printers too) such as FSC (Forest Stewardship Council certified) and PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification) and Environmental Choice New Zealand. And some mills even produce their own energy on site and recycle their water. The key is to choose the right paper for your product and even look into the design of your document to reduce wastage.  Use paper consciously and recycle what you don’t use. And find an environmentally conscious printer.

Here are a couple of interesting stats from the booklet:

“Per tonne of paper produced, energy consumption is down by 21%, greenhouse gas emisions by 22% and water cosnumption by 63% internationally since 1990.”

“New Zealanders recycle and reuse 78% of our waste paper and board, the highest recovery rate for used paper in the world.”

“Reading a newspaper can consume 20% less carbon than viewing news online” (Swedish Royal Institute for Technology)

We think that using digital technologies to communicate has a smaller footprint than paper but it can have a major impact. Think of all the e-waste (toxins and chemicals leaching into landfill), mining of material to make electronics, the energy used (and emissions expended) to run the technology. When you compare this with the sustainable and renewable paper industry “you can see why the print vs digital issue is far from clear-cut environmentally” says the booklet. Definitely something to think about.