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Whatever happened to recycled paper? A look through the shelves of a typical office-products retailer -- large U.S. chains such as Staples, Office Max, and Office Depot -- could lead one to mistakenly believe that recycled paper products are scarce and relatively expensive. Catalogs, brochures, and Web sites of major paper manufacturers and distributors suggest that environmentally preferable paper remains a hard-to-find, specialty item.

That’s not the case, and if activists have any say in the matter, recycled paper will soon be mainstream. Several efforts are under way to push companies toward more recycled-paper buying -- and to pressure those that don’t make the switch.

The decade-long challenge to make recycled paper a widely used commodity inside mainstream companies mirrors the larger struggles to make environmentally preferable products of all types attractive to corporate and institutional customers. Many such goods -- while improving markedly in price, quality, and availability -- are still shunned by procurement officials, often because alternatives aren’t made available by suppliers, or because the demand isn’t strongly indicated by their internal customers.

In the case of paper, the challenges include a lack of understanding about the availability, quality, and price of today’s products, as well as about the reliability of the products to perform well in copiers, fax machines, and printing presses. Company perceptions of recycled paper, it seems, is stuck in the early-'90s image of coarse, speckled paper that clogged business machines.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. A decade ago, "printed on recycled paper" was seen as a corporate badge of environmental commitment (never mind that the statement typically appeared only on environmentally related documents). For some companies, using recycled paper represented a relatively simple action they could take -- and for which they could receive public recognition.

Of course, buying recycled paper isn’t just a corporate image thing. The environmental impacts of making paper from wood fibers remain significant -- particularly in light of the less-polluting alternatives.

Global paper use has grown more than sixfold since 1950, say Janet Abramovitz and Ashley Mattoon, coauthors of Paper Cuts: Recovering the Paper Landscape, recently published by the Worldwatch Institute. A fifth of all wood harvested in the world ends up in paper. It takes 2 to 3.5 tons of trees to make one ton of paper. Pulp and paper is the fifth-largest industrial consumer of energy in the world, using as much power to produce a ton of product as does the iron and steel industry.

There’s more: Making paper uses more water per ton than any other product. It also produces high levels of air and water pollution -- all to make a product that is usually used once and thrown away. Says Worldwatch: "Of the major grades of paper, printing and writing paper is both the most polluting and the fastest growing worldwide."

There’s plenty of raw material. Despite a tripling in the volume of paper recycled since 1975, some 57% of used paper still is not recycled. Because of soaring consumption, increases in the overall generation of paper waste have outpaced the growth in recycling. In the US, for example, where paper accounts for nearly 40% of all municipal solid waste, more paper is sent to landfills each year than is consumed by all of China, the world’s second-largest paper user.

Increasing recycled paper use offers significant potential for environmental and economic benefits. Global consumption of wood fiber for papermaking could be cut by more than 50%, say Abramovitz and Mattoon, through a combination of trimming paper consumption in industrial countries, improving papermaking efficiency, and expanding the use of recycled and nonwood or "tree-free" materials. Beyond saving trees, making new paper from old takes a fraction of the energy and chemicals used in virgin paper production.

Myth and Misunderstanding

So, why isn’t more recycled paper being used inside companies? A decade ago, the answer had to do with a shortage of deinking plants, which turn used paper back into pulp, the raw material for making paper. As deinking plants came online during the 1990s, capacity grew and costs fell.

The problem today is that the principal gatekeepers -- office-products retailers, paper distributors, and printers -- aren’t making recycled papers widely available, says Susan Kinsella, executive director of Conservatree (http://www.conservatree.com), a nonprofit information and technical assistance resource on recycled paper.

"Paper merchants and stores are just in the business of taking orders," says Kinsella. "They don’t market recycled paper at all. And sometimes, they negatively market it. When people ask for recycled, they talk them out of it and into virgin papers, which may have higher profit margins. They are often discouraging people from getting recycled paper."

The result, she says, is a vicious circle in which unknowledgeable customers fail to ask for recycled paper, which keeps distributors from stocking the products, which keeps them from view and dampens demand.

Beyond that, says Kinsella, is a great deal of myth and misunderstanding about the availability, price, and quality of recycled papers. Some key issues:

AVAILABILITY

According to Kinsella, the prevalence of curbside paper recycling in residential neighborhoods in the U.S. and elsewhere has led many folks to assume that most paper products naturally contain recycled fibers. In reality, she says, only about 7% of paper products include recycled content, ranging from 10% recycled material in coated papers to 100% in some uncoated stocks. The overall use of post-consumer content in paper is less than 3%.

The number of recycled paper products has remained steady, despite dramatic changes in the industry, says Kinsella, who recently updated a three-year-old survey of paper companies and their offerings. "When we last did the survey, in 1997, there were about 500 papers. With all the mergers and companies going out of business, and a number of papers taken off the market, I was concerned we’d lost a lot of papers. But there are still 500 papers, and they come from some of best companies in the world. We have a really good base to expand from."

PRICE

While many recycled paper products remain more expensive than their virgin counterparts, that’s not always the case and price differentials have dropped significantly in recent years. Private-label recycled copy papers sold by major chains are sometimes cheaper than their virgin, brand-name competitors.

Paper-buying cooperatives are one means of evening out price differences. In October, for example, the San Diego, Calif.-based Recycled Products Purchasing Cooperative (http://www.recycledproducts.org), which pools buying power to make recycled papers more affordable, expanded its services nationwide. The nonprofit co-op buys 30% recycled-content paper from Willamette Industries, an Oregon paper maker, attracting customers like Sea World of California, the city of San Diego, and Union Bank of California. RPPC says its members will buy 50,000 cases, or 1,250 tons, of paper this year.

Meanwhile, the Buy Recycled Business Alliance (http://brba.nrc-recycle.org), a partnership of the National Recycling Coalition (NRC), has teamed up with Boise Cascade Office Products to offer a recycled-content product purchasing program to NRC members. The program, also launched in October, will target more than 3,200 BRBA members.

Such efforts are helping to close recycled-virgin price gaps. "Many companies are telling me that they’re getting recycled copier paper for within 3% to 5% of the price of virgin paper," says Kinsella. "And some are able to negotiate deals to get it at the same price."

When price differences exist, they can be more than offset by reducing paper use, which should be a key strategy of any organizational paper policy. Bank of America, the US largest bank, reduced its paper consumption by 25% in just two years by using online reports and forms, email, double-sided copying, and lighter-weight papers, according to Worldwatch. It also recycles 61% of its paper, saving about half a million dollars a year in waste-hauling fees. Some 75% of all its paper purchases have recycled content.

QUALITY

Despite significant improvements in paper quality, there’s still a widespread perception that recycled paper won’t work well in printing, copying, and fax equipment. But that’s simply not the case. A 1999 study by the U.S. Government Printing Office and three manufacturers of office equipment found that copier paper with 30% post-consumer content performs just as well as virgin paper. Federal agencies have been required to buy 30% post-consumer copier paper since 1999.

In the GPO test, two million sheets of paper were tested on a variety of copiers and printers. The 30% recycled content paper jammed in equipment 1.5 to 3.2 times for every 100,000 sheets. Paper containing 20% recycled material jammed 2.8 to 2.9 times per 100,000 sheets, and virgin paper jammed 2.9 times per 100,000 sheets.

One culprit in spreading disinformation are office-equipment technicians, who often blame machine problems on recycled paper, thereby discouraging its use. This problem was recently acknowledged by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP), which included in a contract specification an admonishment that "Xerox technicians . . . shall not inform DWP employees that recycled paper does not work in copiers or causes jams." Other government agencies and companies reportedly are considering taking similar steps to avoid discouraging recycled paper use.

Paper Tigers

Corporate paper use may be under increased scrutiny by activists, who -- empowered by recent victories to move major wood buyers and sellers toward sustainable timber -- are focusing on other forestry issues. In February, for example, activists took their crusade to the retail level when they staged protests outside Staples office supply stores around the U.S. The protest -- organized by the American Lands Alliance, the Coastal Rainforest Coalition, and Rainforest Action Network -- is said to be the opening gambit in efforts to persuade the $8.8 billion retailer and its competitors to carry more recycled paper and ensure the fibers going into paper products don’t come from ancient forests.

Another activist effort, dubbed PAPER (for Printing Alternatives Promoting Environmental Responsibility), aims to prod magazine publishers to incorporate more recycled paper into their publications. The group (http://www.ecopaperaction.org), a project of the Independent Press Association, Conservatree, and Co-op America, aims to "combine the power of consumer activism, green business leadership, and corporate responsibility to reform one of the industries that has the greatest impact on forests: magazine publishing." Among its first targets is Condé Nast’s Traveler magazine, whose editorial promotion of natural resources, recreation, and scenic beauty, say activists, must be met with environmentally responsible corporate practices. PAPER hopes to persuade Condé Nast and other publishers to use more recycled-content and non-chlorine-bleached paper.

If the activists are successful at moving recycled-paper use to the forefront of public scrutiny, companies that have locked in supplies and suppliers will be ahead of the game.

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IMPLEMENTING A RECYCLED PAPER PROGRAM

1. Cut paper use. Before initiating any buy-recycled effort, it is important to first reduce overall paper use. There are a wide range of things that can be done, including adopting a two-sided copying and printing policy; circulating memos and reports rather than printing copies for everyone; and using email, Web sites, and CD-ROMs to distribute information.
   
2. Put your commitment in writing. Be specific -- for example, that paper should contain at least 30% post-consumer recycled content. Make the commitment part of your organization’s procurement policy. In addition, your policy could specify a percentage of "tree-free" products and a reduction or elimination of chlorine-bleached products.
   
3. Research what's available. Check with printers, graphic designers, and paper suppliers for recycled paper products that are competitive in price and quality with products currently being used. If suppliers try to discourage you from switching to recycled, try other vendors.
   
4. Help others make the switch. Professional purchasers may need technical information to help them implement a procurement policy. They also may need to set up "blanket orders" from which other employees can request deliveries as needed. Nonprofessional purchasers may want to understand definitions and know about cost, labeling, performance, and other issues. Create in-house resources, including swatch samples, product backgrounders, and a database of paper manufacturers and distributors.
   
5. Track progress. Keep track of virgin- and recycled-paper purchases, as well as overall paper use. Look for opportunities to make further improvements -- for example, by continually ratcheting up recycled-content standards, or by overall reductions in paper use. Report progress to employees (in electronic form, of course) so they’ll know they are making a difference.

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