Happy Earth Day!  Find an Earth Day event in your community, have fun, and learn! 

My thanks to Suzanne C who wrote this article to assist the everyday consumer with purchasing paper goods that are the best environmental choice.  Not only is she an amazing mom of 2, but she works with her husband and his business, Wisent Environmental Inc. Based in Burnaby BC, Wisent Environmental works with businesses to deliver sustainable solutions for the way they purchase, manage, use and dispose of their supplies and materials.  Read on…

Increasingly, parents are looking for greener and more sustainable products and experiences when it comes to their children and families. People are making changes, and you see the evidence everywhere.  Folks are opting for thermoses for their daily coffee fix instead of throwing away paper or Styrofoam coffee cups, refilling water bottles instead of buying and disposing of them after each use, and bringing reusable bags for their trips to the grocery store. What about paper products?  It’s the simplest of items – things we buy for our households all the time.  Items like paper towels (if you’re not already using re-usable kitchen cloths such as microfiber instead) or bath tissue (there’s really no getting away from needing this) or even the seemingly endless supply of craft and drawing paper your children need for their daily drawing, colouring, cutting and pasting?

Here is a bit of a refresher on what exactly we should be looking for when we go to buy these paper products – made from our natural resource – trees.

“Recycled” Paper Products such as paper towels and bath tissue:

When purchasing paper products it is important to understand the “recycling logo” and its meaning. Paper that is designated as “recycled” can be a mixture of virgin wood fiber, pre-consumer waste and /or post-consumer waste.  It is important to consider that producing recycled paper produces 74% less air pollution, 35% less water pollution, and creates 5 times the number of jobs than producing paper from virgin paper sources - trees. It saves old-growth trees, forest ecosystems, native habitat and biodiversity - providing an all around much better choice for increasingly green conscious customers.

The difference between Pre-consumer and Post-consumer content in recycled paper:

Pre-consumer (sometimes referred to as Post-industrial) content is paper made out of  paper scraps and trimmings left over from the paper manufacturing process. These paper scraps and trimmings are easiest to recycle, as they do not have to be collected, separated, de-inked etc.  Post consumer waste (PCW) is paper that has been used by the end consumer and then is collected for recycling from various recycling programs.  This is the best paper to buy, as it uses and creates demand for paper that would normally end up in the landfill and no trees are cut down for making the paper.

When looking at the labeling on paper products we look for 2 numbers - the first expresses the percentage of total recycled content and the second number shows the post-consumer waste recycled content. For example, on a label that reads 50% recycled 20% PCW, this means of the 50% recycled content, 30% is pre-consumer recycled and 20% is post-consumer recycled, leaving 50% of the content coming from virgin fiber.  100% post-consumer waste (PCW) is of course the best environmental choice.

Another note – if something says its “recyclable” that only means it can be recycled and pretty much any paper product can be recycled so it’s really an empty statement.  Worse, it probably means the product had no better redeeming environmental qualities to state so it’s likely made from 100% virgin fibers…and that’s our trees.

Chlorine in Paper:

Chlorine and its derivatives (such as chlorine dioxide) are used in paper manufacturing as a whitener, and are very harmful to the environment, particularly the aquatic environment, and produce dioxins linked to cancer. In order to reduce potential risks, a number of paper manufacturers have switched to chlorine-free technologies. There are 3 types of chlorine labeled paper out there:

TCF (Totally Chlorine Free) paper is produced with pulp that has been bleached without any type of chlorine, or that has not been bleached at all. To date, unfortunately, this paper does not usually contain recycled content.

ECF (Elemental Chlorine Free) paper is produced from pulp that has been bleached with a chlorine derivative such as chlorine dioxide (ClO2), but without elemental chlorine (Cl). ECF papers still uses chlorine derivatives— so while less harmful to the environment, elemental chlorine still produce toxic chlorinated organic compounds, including chloroform, a known carcinogen. These compounds are released into waterways as effluent from the bleaching process, where they produce environmental damage.

PCF (Processed Chlorine Free) paper is made using no chlorine during manufacturing. A note here is that since some of the pre or post consumer waste paper being recycled may previously have been bleached with chlorine to begin with, recycled paper labeled PCF can not be labeled ‘totally chlorine-free’, but the current ‘process’ they use allows them to label it “Processed Chlorine Free”.

Paper products labeled PCF are the environmentally preferable choice because it has not had chlorine or its derivatives used during the manufacturing process, and utilizes recycled content.

So there you have it!  We recommend you look for and read the labels of the paper products when you buy - just like you would when comparing food value labels.