There’s plenty of talk about going paperless and whether digital is better for the environment, but the actual evidence on the environmental impact of paper is surprising and worth knowing.
The conversation on print’s environmental impact has been skewed towards companies wanting to save money rather than an objective look at the real situation. “Saving a tree’ has an appealing ring to it, but is that what you’re really doing by not using paper?
“Noble thinking, but bad logic,” says Dr Phillip Lawrence of Edith Cowan University. “Many contributors, largely consultants, adding to the argument, while well-meaning, have only served to confuse the issue and largely ignored the science.”
Trees absorb carbon dioxide from the earth’s atmosphere. That makes the paper industry the only sector in the world that exists in a ‘terrestrial carbon cycle’, ie. above ground. All that carbon dioxide captured by trees is stored in paper. It doesn’t ever get released back into the atmosphere. The production of pulp and paper releases very little carbon into the atmosphere, making this industry just about carbon neutral.
CO2 emissions for paper production have reduced by 90kg per tonne of paper produced since 2014. Carbon emissions data on paper mills around the world show they now emit very little CO2 and, in some cases, they emit zero. In Australia, the local paper mill in Tasmania where much of Australia’s office paper supply is produced, uses 100% renewable hydroelectric power and replants forested trees, so it’s actually carbon positive.
Australia currently has two million hectares of working forests, including tree farms for paper production, and this number is growing. That equates to over 1,000,000 MCGs in land area.
“We have a strong environmental record, made from a renewable resource, 100% recyclable and highly recycled (87%).” said Kellie Northwood, CEO of The Real Media Collective.
What about paper production’s carbon footprint? “Comparing to digital media streams with significant data storages and internet reliance in fossil-fuelled energy economies, print media is the most sustainable mass communicator available to marketers wanting to reduce their footprint,” said Dr Lawrence.
Comparisons of the footprint of paper vs digital rarely, if ever, include the manufacture and distribution of digital hardware and the energy involved in reading it.
Dr Lawrence sums up this discrepancy well: “The point here being, digital has a footprint and it’s big.”
The amount of waste that paper production creates is so small, it’s measured in kilograms per year.
Following successful models in Japan, Australia is now looking at using paper manufacture waste as a fuel source where the excess can be added to the nation’s energy supply, helping to move Victoria away from fossil-fuel dependency.
No tree is saved by switching to digital. Quite the opposite, The more paper we use, the more trees are planted. And that’s wonderful for the environment. There’s an assumption that because paper is made from trees then it must be bad for the environment. The facts are that paper is a very sustainable industry and the bulk of the wood it uses is from plantations and recycling.
The biggest culprits in global deforestation are urban development, agriculture and cattle farming.
There has been a significant shift in recent years in the way Australian plantations operate towards more sustainable and environmentally responsible methods. It’s worth catching up on what’s happening so you can make an informed decision about using paper.
Things are not as they were last century. “The print industry can stand tall with its environmental credentials. It has reduced its footprint by more than 90% since 1990. That is a remarkable figure by any measure. Printing machines have reduced energy use by around 40% every ten years, and since the early ‘90s, the entire industry has reduced chemical use by 98%,” said Dr Lawrence.
Opal Australian Paper is Australia’s major paper producer. They source their timber from HPV Plantations in Victoria. 70% of HVP’s land is sustainably-managed plantations. They don’t harvest native forest. The remaining 30% of its land is for plantation protection, conservation and other community values.
HVP’s commitments to the Forest Stewardship Council’s® (FSC®, FSC-C014387) certification standards and the Australian Forestry Standard (AFS) certification standards on their forest estate are examples of this major move in the paper industry towards responsible and accountable forestry practices. These commitments are subject to regular, independent, third-party audits.
One of OAP’s divisions is Reflex, the biggest-selling copier paper in Australia. All of Opal Australian Paper’s wood supplies come from plantations in Victoria. Reflex, along with all of their products, are 100% Australian made at the Maryvale Mill in Victoria that contributes $911m to Australia’s GDP*, supports over 5,700 jobs, and every ream of Reflex you buy adds $1.88 to Government revenues (you can check these stats in the Economic & Government Revenue Impacts: Australian Paper, Western Research Institute, January 2017, pp. 3 and 7).
The Maryvale Mill also takes 80,000 tonnes of wastepaper out of Australia’s landfill and recycles it into paper that’s certified carbon neutral through the Australian Government's National Carbon Offset Scheme (NCOS.). Planet Ark have partnered with Reflex to promote the use of recycled paper, which is currently at much lower levels in Australia than it ought to be.
Are we recycling enough paper? We’re good at recycling it, we just don’t use enough. Our 2019-2020 rate of 68% recycling of paper and cardboard is up 5% on the previous two years (Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation Collective Impact Report, page 5) and puts us towards the top globally.
Paper is one of the most sustainable and recycled products on the planet.
It’s one of the only industries in the world where the end product is completely recyclable and reusable. As a comparison to paper recycling, ewaste contains toxic elements, it’s not biodegradable and it remains in the environment in ways that transfer to living things.
You can put paper in your own garden if you want to and it will decompose. That’s not something many people would be willing to do with an old computer. Even paper that isn’t recycled is biodegradable so it won’t be sitting in landfills for centuries the way ewaste will.
Are we using enough recycled paper? No, we’re not. Not yet, anyway. APCO’s report says “Consumption of paper and paperboard has remained relatively stable but is expected to grow strongly over the next four years.”
We recommend using recycled paper for everyday use. It’s also great for your marketing products because it communicates that you care about your impact on the environment.
Rethink your use of paper as a sustainable product. Many of the reasons to “go paperless” are about reducing costs not saving the environment, but that’s not the reason being presented. So many businesses opting for shaving a bit off their marketing budget in favour of contributing to the massive pool of digital marketing leaves print products wide open for the smart move to use it and stand out as a business with integrity and creativity.
Save a tree, use more paper.
Reducing your paper use buys into myths about its production that are promoted by companies and individuals with an investment in digital technology.
“If brands did rely on peer-reviewed, fact-based research on the environmental decisions they made, it is more likely they would not be advertising online or on television screens,” said Dr Lawrence.
If you want more details on the sustainability of paper and the facts on this industry, you can get a lot of information in a short time in Two Side’s Graphic Paper Myths or see B&T Magazine’s Debunking the myths: the Environmental Cred of Print Media.
