This week, we have looked into what the U.S. Government Printing Office is doing to make its operation more environmentally sustainable and have taken a look at two companies who have gone above and beyond in reducing their respective environmental footprints.  Today, we would like to give recognition to some of the paper companies who have been leading the environmental charge and providing lots of good information to help all of us understand how our businesses impact the environment and what we can do to reduce that impact.

Of course, paper plays a significant role in any printing operation, and while there are many actions that can be taken to make your operation more sustainable that do not involve paper, paper is certainly a good place to start.

And the paper companies are doing more than providing paper that uses fibers from responsibly managed forests or with recycled content.  Unisource, for example, sponsors WhatTheyThink’s Going Green blog, allowing us to bring you up to the minute news and ideas about what works and what doesn’t in green marketing and printing.  Unisource also has its own “green” page that informative and educational articles and information.  A couple that caught my eye were Life After Certification: Where to Now? and “How Paper is Recycled.”  The latter article points out that in the U.S., we are doing a pretty good job of recycling paper, with 55% of the paper consumed in the U.S. being recovered for recycling.  Of course, that means that 45% is not, so we do have room to improve!  The article goes on to point out, “if measured by weight, more paper is recovered for recycling from municipal solid waste streams than all glass, plastic and aluminum combined. Additional good news: every ton of paper recovered for recycling saves 3.3 cubic yards of landfill space.”