Recycling sounds like the right thing to do, but is this always the case? Heric gauges the impact of de-inked pulp.
We hear a lot about paper, trees, and the environmental impact that this business, our business has upon the world. I hear it all the time: "We're killing trees..." etc. This business that we have all chosen to make our living from has the outward appearance anyway of being a detriment to the environment. To that end, I thought it might be an interesting research project to find out for myself if it really does help the environment to focus on and use recycled or "De-Inked Pulp" in your business. I mean it obviously sounds like the right thing to do, "recycle", but when you think about it... recycling is a nasty business in and of itself.
So I looked into it, and found numerous reports that all have a slightly different way to look at the gauge the impact, it appears that there is a small but undeniable advantage to the carbon footprint of recycled pulp material versus virgin pulp. Research into alternative sources of pulp like hemp, kenaf pulp, and others have also offered alternatives to wood pulp that may prove to be even better alternatives from a strictly environmental impact of pulp manufacture, but all technology at provisioning high-quality printable pulp-paper consumes environmental resources.
Companies like Time-Warner, have posted publicly their environmental policy regarding paper (see link 1), and it shows that they have chosen a lighter and more supercalendered version of their print substrate for the environmental issues involved in printing millions of weekly new periodicals. It is obvious that enough of their readership is concerned about the nature of this that they feel that they need to share this policy.
The process of recycling paper products consumes resources on several fronts. It consumes fossil fuels in the process of gathering and collecting the paper to be recycled, and it consumes very large quantities of bleaches, acids, and perhaps most importantly water.
On the positive side, we have made great strides in the roles of "greening" up our industry.
I took my first professional print-service-provider job (20 years ago) at a 100 year old engraver "Capitol Engraving." When I started at Capitol, there were a number of employees whom had been there for roles that pre-dated the rapid-access or litho technologies we had grown to. These guys etched and engraved copper, and zinc. It is also not surprising that they used a lot more vile and caustic materials than rapid-access developer and fixer. They used things with names like "Dragon's Blood" and the like... things that bubbled and sputtered when they applied them to metal plates. I also shudder to remember seeing them pour large quantities of these corrosive poisons down the drain directly. This was a generation of people who really never were worried about such things, but still had the issue of "What else are we going to do with it?" to deal with it... so they did... they poured it down the drain.
I like to think that a lot of the work that I have done in the past to implement CTP and desktop planning and assembly/proofing systems have had a positive impact upon the environment over the years. But in a nutshell, does it mean that I have empowered publications to kill trees ever so much more efficiently? (Just joking, but that is the way some in the world may see it.) In reality however, the methods we use today to produce print are much more environmentally sound than our forbears'. Our whole industry is now a series of environmental compliance specifications and Occupational Safety Hazards awareness and documentation.
Financial motivation
Like so many reasons people go green and "recycle", the decisions people use to begin the process are mainly financial. People did not worry too much about pouring spent photo-chemistry down the drain until the Silver Reclamation Services started showing up at their doors, and offering them money to process the silver from it instead.
So which is it? Is it greener to recycle paper or not? Well, that is still, despite immense research into it, a grey area. It is true that in most of North America for example, there is a net growth to the ratio number of trees planted for pulp, and the pulp harvest itself. We literally plant more trees than we harvest for pulp, making even virgin pulp sustainable. (There are some concerns about indigenous wildlife and flora/fauna that populate pulp forests versus native timber, but these issues are more difficult to quantify, and out of scope of this contribution.) The environmental impact of paper manufacture does not just come to measure by measuring trees however. Recycling paper is not a green process at all, and while it does indeed save some resources, it also impacts other environmental segments more than straight manufacture of pulp from trees planted solely for the purpose of making pulp. There are vast quantities of bleaching agents, oxidising agents, and acids used in both the manufacture, and reclamation of pulp from recycled paper products. See link 2 which has some good consumer-level information that takes many of the issues into account.
Reversing the process
Part of the problem with recycling paper is the fact that recycled paper, has the unfortunate part of its history in which we put ink on it in the past! We did our best to make sure it had the best coating of the most tenacious ink we could find, and it is the role of the recycling process to take our hard work away, and reverse the process. It appears however, that after most of the factors are taken into account (including landfill and CO2 emissions), it does indeed use fewer resources to recycle paper/pulp than it does to harvest and manufacture virgin pulp. Financial and tax-benefit incentives most assuredly will supplant this, but ultimately, both process are close in environmental impact.
It is not a massive savings to the environment to utilise recycled pulp/paper, but when one looks at the massive numbers of printed material, and the volume of which it is being produced per-capita, it can do nothing but help in the long run. The very narrow scope of this contribution do not allow an in-depth comparison, but it is more meant to illustrate that our business is inherently consumptive, and anything we can do that makes a small impact, may have a larger overall effect. We may see an increase in the number of clients whom request recycled papers for their print products, but it is not often for the altruistic reasons of saving the planet, more likely, for saving dollars.
| Recycling Links |
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1) Paper and Printing at Time Inc.
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2) Recycling paper - Is it really such a good thing?
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