Not Pulp Fiction: US Companies Find Cleaner Paper Practices Make Business Sense

The Alliance for Environmental Innovation released a report today describing how five market-leading companies are reducing the environmental impacts of their paper use while advancing their business objectives. The report, Leading By Example: How Businesses are Expanding the Market for Environmentally Preferable Paper, found the following:

• BankAmerica cut paper use and costs by eliminating unnecessary packaging, using lighter weight paper and using email and the company’s intranet to substitute for paper over the past decade. Bank of America Corporation, created by the 1998 merger of BankAmerica and NationsBank, has put into place, or is working toward, source reduction and recycling processes and goals. Consolidation of forms, electronic communications and print-on-demand features replaced more than 60% of the combined banks’ inventory of paper forms and internal reports.

   

• Ben & Jerry’s introduced an unbleached ice cream container that replaces a container made from paper bleached with chlorine compounds. A clay-coated printing surface on the new container maintains the appearance of the old container, but the new container is brown on the inside, rather than white. Ben & Jerry’s customers have accepted this new, less-polluting package.

   

• McDonald’s eliminated 26,500 tons of packaging material from 1991 to 1997; source reduction initiatives such as these saved the company $12.2 million in 1997 through 1998. More than 50% of McDonald’s paper packaging now contains recycled content. McDonald’s is developing a forestry scorecard that will rate its suppliers based on their forestry management policies and operations.

   

• Time, Inc. is directing the growth in its paper purchasing toward suppliers that support the concept of a “minimum impact” pulp and paper mill. As one example, Time is importing between 15,000 and 25,000 tons of paper per year from a new, world-class, totally chlorine free (TCF) paper mill in Sweden. In the last five years, three of Time’s top six suppliers have established new business relationships with the company based in part on their environmental records.

   

• UPS created the first two-use reusable express envelope with the Alliance for Environmental Innovation in 1998. UPS has committed to eliminating bleached paper from its express packaging, and has increased the postconsumer recycled content of this packaging by 22%.

“These companies are market leaders and environmental leaders,” said Alliance economic analyst John Ruston. “They have learned how to reduce the environmental impacts of paper use while meeting their business objectives. Less air and water pollution, reduced solid waste and conservation of forest resources are the result of these improved paper-purchasing practices. This business leadership spreads a vital message to all industries while benefiting the planet and consumers.”