Environmental Responsibility in the Paper Industry: "Post-Consumer" vs. regular "Recycled" Paper

The business world is slowly transitioning from the post-Gutenburg era of mass media driven by the printing press, towards a more utopian vision of a "paperless" society.

This is good -- less paper waste means less rainforest depletion, less decimation to the planet's diverse plant and animal species, and more trees to convert CO2 into oxygen.

However, like most utopian ideals, it will probably not be fully realized in any of our lifetimes. So as long as we're still using paper, it is the responsibility of those in related industries to be environmentally conscious.

Regardless of one's views on the controversy of global warming and other environmental issues, I think we can all agree that less waste is a good thing. We've gone over the ways in which Docucopies tries to be good stewards of the planet before, and we don't need to beat a dead horse.

But a customer recently asked us to send an email confirmation that the paper we list as "100% Recycled" is in fact 100% post-consumer recycled (which it is).

But what is the difference?

Basically, unless something is specifically designated "post-consumer" recycled, there is no guarantee that the material used actually went through the entire consumer cycle. For example, something labeled "recycled" may have been reconstituted from the holes which were punched out at a paper company for pre-punched paper. These tiny scraps of paper never went into the marketplace, were never bought by consumers and recycled, and were never made back into a product again. In contrast, post-consumer recycled materials were made into a product, bought by a consumer, recycled, and re-made into another product.

All of our paper which is not labeled "recycled" is made from 25% post-consumer materials. The paper listed as "recycled" is 100% post-consumer recycled (we just can't fit that whole description in the drop-down box for paper types, but if you click to view details of the paper stocks it is explained fully in that area).

So we hope this clears up any confusion!

For more information on paper lingo as it relates to environmental friendliness, visit: http://www.environmentalpaper.org/PAPER-DEFINITIONS.html