Please consider the environment before printing this post

The other day saw a very interesting and heated debate over a hot topic on one of my green business lists - the addition of that little line at the end of e-mail signatures that asks you to "please consider the environment before printing this e-mail." Or it says to "Think Green! Don't Print This E-mail!" Or it says any other of a seemingly endless number of iterations of this single thought: don't waste so much paper.

While I understand the idea, and appreciate it, my objection to these lines is a few-fold:

1. It assumes that I, the reader, am going to print this e-mail, even if it's just a quick confirmation on something. I'm not.
2. What if I actually NEED to print the e-mail? The only things I print are receipts, directions, or e-mails that have significant history information related to projects I'm in the middle of at the zen kitchen. This is a total of about 10-15% of my e-mail. Everything else gets deleted or put into a folder. Should I feel like I'm somehow not "considering the environment" because I need paper records of these things? 
3. While e-mail signatures can be a truly helpful marketing tool, we seem to have reached an age where signatures have gone completely out of hand. People are busy, and while an e-mail signature is a great way to give people the basic information they need to check out your business and contact you, adding a bunch of stuff to the end of your signature dilutes your message, clogs their e-mail and, if they DO need to print it, adds to the amount of paper they need to print. How is that "green?"

Finally, while the issue of office waste is definitely vast, it's been my experience at least that much of that waste isn't because people are printing their e-mails. In some cases yes, high-level executives will have their assistants print every e-mail - either because they don't "get" the e-mail system or because the assistants vet their e-mails and print just the important ones. But this is a systemic issue, and telling the assistants (the people actually printing the e-mails) not to print isn't helping anything - they don't have a choice. Further, if an executive truly doesn't "get" how e-mail works, how will seeing that little line at the bottom of a printed page help? Wouldn't it be better to have a conversation and show him how e-mail works? Or better yet, have the assistant vet all the e-mails according to importance and then let the executive view it? 

The point here is that, in the 10 years that I spent in various capacities at offices all over New England before starting the zen kitchen, the tremendous amount of paper waste I saw rarely came from e-mail. Rather, it came from:

1. The endless number of forms that were often required to get anything done (the average office I worked in had at least 5-10 forms to fill out depending on what you needed done, and they were always looking to create more forms for things)
2. In the case of design studios/ad agencies/art departments, printing a new iteration of a brochure/layout/etc. *every* time they made a change to it, no matter how minor. In some places, you even had to print multiples, which would be distributed among various people in the organization. I once had to print out a new 12*18 sheet for a layout edit that included adding a comma. Really. Nothing more - just a comma. 
   
3. In the case of mortgage/banking companies (where I worked as an admin assistant before deciding to become a designer - way back in '97-'98), it was filling out a 15-page thick pile of forms just to get a loan package started, then having to make two copies of each package, copies of the related documentation, etc.

Notice, please - none of this involves printing e-mails. So who is that line really helping?

Green Design: Where did that paper come from?

Yesterday, at a seminar on FSC certification and paper held by Kirkwood Printing, several paper companies and a representative of the FSC (Forestry Stewardship Council) got together to discuss paper's impact on the environment. The discussion focused around such issues as responsible forestry, the paper companies' renewable energy initiatives, and why recycled paper isn't always the greenest option (1. there isn't enough fiber to meet demand; 2. the fibers downgrade over repeated recycling, which means you have to add new content to make it strong enough; 3. the recycled content gets sourced from all over the place). But all of this helped me realize something rather striking: a piece of paper's carbon footprint goes a lot deeper than the paper company itself.

This is the deal: Papermaking isn't just "have tree-make paper." It involves cutting down the tree, turning it into pulp, making paper from the pulp and then distributing the paper. Each of these steps requires a seperate set of trucks driving to a separate facility where each step happens, and most paper companies don't handle every step of the process. They buy their pulp from an outside source, which means that the pulp needs to be shipped to them, after being shipped from the forest. But for the life of me, I can't figure out where it gets shipped FROM.

Finch paper and Cascade (who specializes in recycled) was the only company at the event yesterday that mentioned that they source locally. Cascade actually collects and pulps the paper themselves for their sheets (they're in Quebec). Finch owns the forests that provide much of its pulp, and they buy the rest from small landowners in the New England area (mostly Maine and Vermont). Crane's, Mohawk, Monadnock, Neenah and Sappi were also there (among others), but they didn't have time to speak to the issue in detail. Although many of the companies' sites have extensive information about their environmental stewardship (and most are doing some seriously impressive stuff), I can't seem to find information specifically about where they buy their pulp.

What all of this means is that we now have yet another consideration as green designers: not only do we need to think about how much recycled content, where the paper itself comes from, etc. but we have to think further back along the supply chain: where did the pulp come from? Where were the trees harvested from? How were the rights of the workers and inhabitants of those forests impacted?

FSC certification helps with this by making sure that the forests paper comes from are being managed sustainably, and with respect to the rights of the workers and inhabitants of the forests. But what about the carbon footprint of the two steps prior to paper becoming paper? How can we make sure our paper is coming from responsibly-managed forests while also minimizing the carbon footprint all the way down the supply chain?

I don't have an answer. But I want one.

By the way, what can you do when you're choosing a paper for your next project? Here's a couple of ideas:

• Find paper companies that are as local to you as possible, and look for sheets that are FSC-certified, preferably with a significant amount of postconsumer recycled content.
• If you can, talk to the paper company about where they get the materials for their paper.
• Explore alternative-fiber papers, like cotton, kenaf, sugarcane and bamboo. These have their own carbon-footprint issues (after all, they don't grow sugar in New England, right?), but much of the alternative fiber used in these papers is taking material directly out of the landfill. Crane's sources its cotton from textile industry byproduct (i.e. cuttings that can't be used), and Neenah's sugarcane pulp (in the Environment line) comes from the material left over from the sugar refining process.
• Talk to your printer about what mills are closest to your area, and ask them for advice on the best sheet to use for your project.

Green Printing: 12 things you should know

Today while cleaning out my inbox, I came across this article on Dynamic Graphics, which talks about green printing, and outlines some basic principles. Writer Cassie Hart makes some excellent points, and I even discovered a few new tips to use here at the zen kitchen. A quick excerpt:

Many of us make a conscious effort to practice environmental responsibility. We haul old newspapers to local recycling centers. We use ink refi ll kits instead of buying new cartridges for our printers. And who doesn’t have at least one blue recycling bin wedged underneath the desk?

But is this enough? Noah Scalin, founder of ALR Design doesn’t think so. “Social consciousness isn’t just about making good paper and ink choices,” he says. “A lot more of it has to do with how work is produced.” For designers, this means keeping the environment in mind when planning projects.

Read the full article here.

Domtar Designer Corner presents Eco-Smart

So, for a while now, I've become fascinated with how different paper companies have been handling the sustainability issue. Sappi Fine Paper is now wearing its FSC Certification loud and proud, and Mohawk (my favorite thus far, and the line I spec most often) actually trains a selected group of its sales staff as specialists in eco-friendly print production. Love them!

A couple of days ago, I finally took notice of Domtar EarthChoice, a line of eco-responsible papers from Domtar. After some poking around on the Domtar site (and getting some samples, including a really cool album cover poster that they just wanted me to have, apparently), I noticed something exciting: The Domtar Designer Corner, which has all sorts of information goodies for designers - from creative tips and tips on using paper effectively to (my favorite) a complete section called Eco-Smart, which has all sorts of green news and tips for the eco-friendly designer in all of us. My favorite eco-news: Victoria's Secret is making steps towards greening their catalogs! Hey - it's small - but progress is always good.

I can't wait to spend some time with this site.