Choosing sustainable
paper for your company

Why do we need to use recycled paper?

Paper is biodegradable, but in landfill it can take fifty years to break down.

Recycling that paper waste instead will reduce the need for landfill, create jobs and help to ease pressure on forest resources. With the growing commitment to responsible forest management, preventing trees being cut down is becoming less of a key incentive for buying recycled paper. However, it is still true that continuing demand for recycled fibre products will relieve pressure on the world's forest resources.

Buying recycled grades helps to stimulate the market for recovered/recycled fibre and recycling the paper when you're finished with it will complete the cycle. Buying paper that has a high proportion of post-consumer waste is helping the most to ease landfill and disposal problems.

Should my Annual Report be on a sustainable product?

Yes, and so should the rest of your print!

Every business should care for the world, but protecting corporate reputation is a pressing concern. Shareholders and customers increasingly expect you to use recycled paper for all your print. Simply going green for your Reports and other high profile publications, such as your Environmental Policy, is a good start, but it is not enough to demonstrate true commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility.

The rest of your customer-facing print and all of your major communications should also be printed on sustainable products. When people start to scrutinise the small print it will be better to have most printed on an acceptable paper rather than one or two printed on the very best.

Is recycled paper of less quality than normal paper?

Not at all.

Fortunately the techniques for recycling paper have advanced dramatically over the last 15 years to the point where recovered papermaking fibre can be made as clean as it was in its virgin state. Paper previously used can be 'born again' and made almost as good as new and 'coated' recycled papers provide a surface that is just as good as any normal paper.

So what exactly is recycled paper?

There is no definitive answer!

There is no standard definition of what recycled paper is, other than it's a paper with a proportion of fibre that has been recovered or reprocessed. That proportion of recycled content can range from a handful of fibres to 100%. To further confuse matters, a paper can even be legitimately called 100% recycled even if it is made entirely from offcuts that have never left the paper mill and been used for any purpose!

So how do I choose recycled paper?

Very, very carefully.

You need to know how much of the recycled paper is true 'post-consumer waste' - paper that has been used for its original purpose then recovered and treated to make fresh paper. How the recovered paper was de-inked and whitened is important too. Was it subjected to aggressive bleaching chemicals?

Also, you can't recycle indefinitely. Eventually the paper fibres get too short and weak and virgin fibre needs to be added to the mix to improve its strength and printability. But you need to know where that new fibre has come from. Was it from sustainable forestry and how was it treated during manufacture?

Which is best, TCF or ECF bleaching?

Both are acceptable standards for sustainability!

In the past chlorine gas, or elemental chlorine, was used to bleach papers and so increase their whiteness. This caused environmental problems because chlorine is toxic and the effluent from paper mills was detrimental to aquatic life and water quality.

To overcome the problem the paper industry invested heavily in alternative methods of bleaching. Elemental Chlorine Free (ECF) bleaching doesn't use chlorine gas but instead utilises chlorine dioxide, which is much safer. Also developed was Totally Chlorine Free (TCF) bleaching which typically uses hydrogen peroxide or ozone instead of chlorine.

One of the measures of the toxic effect bleaching has on effluent is the AOX level. This is expressed as kg per tonne of pulp produced, with the lower the figure the better. ECF bleaching will have an AOX level no higher than 0.5 kg/tonne and TCF will have a zero AOX level.

There has been much debate about which method is best for the environment. But many (including the European Commission) now accept that there is no significant difference between the two, assuming the mill is well managed.

Is the production of recycled paper more damaging to the environment than normal paper?

No. Not at all!

Recycled paper manufacture uses up to 70% less energy than virgin papermaking, uses less water, releases fewer pollutants and reduces the amount of waste that has to be disposed of one way or another.

No additional bleaching is used to remove ink either - it's actually removed by soaps. So, it's not true that the amount of bleach required is more for recycled pulp.

The actual papermaking process will be the same whether the pulp contains virgin or recycled fibre. Furthermore, the use of recycled paper reduces the need for landfill.

But 100% recycled is best - right?

Not necessarily!

The sustainable solution is the best option. Combining recycled fibre and virgin fibre provides a sustainable solution for the future. 100% recycled paper cannot be recycled indefinitely - the fibre downgrades and eventually cannot be used for papermaking. That is why 9lives contains a percentage of virgin fibre - it's a sustainable product with strong environmental credentials that does not compromise print quality and is affordable.

What environmental standards should we look for?

There are many used, we've included the ones to look for on our papers.

FSC

The Forest Stewardship Council is an international organisation promoting responsible forest management. FSC has developed principles for forest management, which may be used for certifying the management of forest holdings, and a system of tracing, verifying and labelling timber and wood products which originate from FSC-certified forests.

The FSC scheme also includes a 'chain of custody' system for tracing products back to the forest of origin. Spicers Paper has chain of custody certification.

There are strict rules for using the logo. Printers who want the logo to appear on a job printed on an FSC paper need to be covered by FSC chain of custody certification. Spicers Paper can advise on how to achieve this.

The FSC has the support of many environmental groups who view it as the only truly independent scheme that is consistently applied worldwide and covers all pertinent issues.

EMAS

Eco-Management and Audit System. The European Union's voluntary management and audit system that aims to improve the environmental performance of a company by requesting that it produces regular public environmental performance statements, including items such as energy and resource efficiency.

ISO 14001

The standard published by the International Standards Organisation specifying the requirements of an environmental management system. The certification covers planning, environmental performance evaluation and auditing.

PEFC

Programme for the Endorsement of Forest. A scheme for auditing forestry operations that offers a framework for the mutual recognition of national or regional forest certification schemes, rather than being a specific scheme in its own right. Certification ensures wood used in paper production is exclusively from forests that guarantee renewability and respect for the ecosystem. There is widespread support amongst those in the forest and paper industry who view it as more flexible, economic and user friendly. However environmental groups are less keen and prefer the FSC scheme.

So what's the easy answer?

See that your printer / design studio or agency specifies 9lives!

If you want your corporate communications to be printed on recycled paper that will not leave you exposed, demand that your customer-facing and key internal printed communications are printed on a paper from the 9lives range.

When you specify 9lives you can be sure that your corporate reputation will not suffer because of any lack of print quality or lack of environmental credentials - whether in the finished product or in its manufacturing cycle.