Beyond the Recycling Bin

“After that ton of paper has been made,” Riebel continues, “what’s the environmental impact caused by the printing process and distribution of the catalog you’ve created? Unless you look at the whole lifecycle of the paper, you’re missing out on some very key environmental information,” he notes.

Riebel suggests that, too often, catalogers and other print buyers concentrate exclusively on the amount of recycled fiber used in their papers. But you can purchase paper that doesn’t use any recycled fiber and still has a lower environmental load than a paper made with recycled fiber from a mill that has, for example, obsolete technology, and therefore pollutes the environment more, he notes. “When you use recovered papers, you have to de-ink it, and that produces a lot of sludge. Some mills still [send to] landfills that material. Some modern mills will use it as fuel; they’ll dry and burn it, which is more environmentally sound. This is important to know and only one of the many questions catalogers need to ask.”