Continuing the search for green paper

Forest and Bird, Issue 268, 1 May 1993, Page 43

Continuing the search for green paper

YOU PROBABLY won’t have noticed but, from this issue, the magazine 1s printed on a different type of paper. We do get occasional questions from members along the lines of "why do you use glossy non-

recycled paper" in the magazine. The answer is that the magazine has built a reputation for the standard of its photographs and many more of you tell us that you want us to continue with a pictorial magazine of highquality. We use coated ("glossy") and bleached paper because photographs reproduce much better on a non-absorbent white surface. At present in New Zealand there are no coated papers made from recycled material that are not exorbitantly expensive. There is always a juggling act between maintaining the production quality of the journal and constraining expenditure. Even though paper production is inherently a resource and energy guzzling activity, we are of course always on the lookout for papers that are more environmentally acceptable. One Japa-nese-made paper looked at last year contained 70 percent postconsumer waste, but on investigating the source of the 30 percent virgin fibre we found it came from old-growth Canadian forests. The paper also cost considerably more. The new paper, called Euroart, that this issue of the magazine is printed on, contains a greater recycled content than our previous paper — 30 percent of the pulp is made from recycled mill broke (reject batches or offcuts from the mill floor). Since mill broke has never left the mull it is not reducing the waste stream as much as using post-consumer waste paper, but it is an improvement. The other, more important, factor about this new paper is that it is bleached using hydrogen peroxide rather than chlorine and hence does not produce any of the deadly organochlorines such as dioxin. As with the previous paper, the wood comes from Scandinavian plantation forests.