Ed #13 Balance

To ensure that the paper you use comes from sustainable sources, talk to your printer and your NewPage representative. Ask for their recommendations. Look for paper that is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC), the Sustainable Forestry Initiative® (SFI) or the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC). All three organizations track the chain-of-custody of raw materials, processed materials and products from the forest to the customer, to certify that they are harvested and manufactured using fiber from responsibly managed forests. Certified products are available for use in a wide range of applications, including office papers, books, newspapers, magazines, annual reports, even coffee cups.

Other organizations can also help you make the right choices. The Rainforest Alliance’s Smartwood program sets standards for sustainable forestry. The Green-e logo certifies the use of sustainable energy, including biomass. Green Seal certification indicates products and services, including printing and writing paper, that are produced using sustainable practices. The International Organization for Standardization’s ISO 14001 certification indicates that a company has developed a system to minimize the environmental impact of its operations and has a formal process to continuously improve its performance.

Bear in mind, the environmental cost of paper goes beyond the trees used to make it. Paper production has the single biggest environmental impact of any step in the print production process, mainly because converting logs into paper requires large amounts of energy. Often, that energy comes from coal-fired power plants—one reason why the paper industry emits the fourth-highest level of CO2 among all manufacturers.3

48% of the energy used in NewPage mills comes from renewable biofuels.

However, some paper manufacturers, including NewPage, also use hydroelectric power and large amounts of biofuels—bark, harvest residuals and byproducts of the manufacturing process. In fact, 48 percent of the energy used in NewPage mills is derived from biofuels, far more than the percentage used by society as a whole. And because a tree that dies and decays in the forest releases its CO2 just as if it were burned for fuel, the use of biofuels is considered climate neutral by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Over the past generation or so, paper mills have dramatically improved their environmental performance. One of the most significant changes has been the elimination of elemental chlorine from the bleaching process, referred to as elemental chlorine free (ECF). Findings showed that elemental chlorine reacted with organic compounds in the wood, which in turn led to trace dioxins in the mill’s effluent. Today, virtually all modern paper mills produce pulp that is ECF or EECF (enhanced elemental chlorine free). In addition, some mills have elected to eliminate all chlorine-containing compounds from the bleaching process by going totally chlorine free (TCF) and using other chemicals such as oxygen, peroxide or ozone. Since 1988, total North American paper industry dioxin emissions have been cut by 92 percent.4

3 U.S. Energy Information Agency
4 http://www.conservatree.org/learn/Essential%20Issues/EIPaperContent.shtml