So far in our Green Series, we’ve talked about the different types of recycled paper and about why it’s important to choose chlorine free paper. But what does it mean when paper is certified by an organization like the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)?

These days, a lot of the products we see in stores are stamped with labels certifying them as “organic” or “free-trade.” Sometimes these labels are straightforward, but sometimes not. While an FSC certification sounds appealing, how much weight should we give it? If the paper we’re buying is recycled and chlorine free, isn’t that enough?

No. Not if you want to help shift the whole paper production industry away from destructive logging.

Forest Stewardship Council is an international non-profit organization working to promote responsible forest management. This association of forest owners, timber industries, social groups, and environmental organizations has set themselves an impressive mandate; they strive to eliminate habitat destruction, water pollution, displacement of indigenous peoples, and the violence against people and wildlife that often accompanies logging.

So if you see  on a label, that means the paper you’re buying comes from only “well-managed forests that have met FSC’s high social and environmental standards.” What those standards are specifically can be found on their website.

In brief, FSC certification means you’re putting your investments towards those who source their wood from responsibly managed forests and away from companies that support illegal and unsustainable logging.

There are other certifications you might see when you shop for paper, such as Ancient Forest Friendly. Even more certifications apply the “green” label more generally to a business and its practices, attesting, for example, that it uses only carbon neutral shipping. In terms of paper production, though, the FSC mark is the one we look for.

Next up in our Green Series: what kind of mark can you make when you choose an ink?

Should you care about the paper you buy being chlorine free?

When you’re shopping for paper stock, you’ve likely noticed that many papers feature an acronym like PCF, or ECF, or TCF. But what do those acronyms mean? And what do they mean for the environment?

They’re all referring to the degree to which the paper production process avoids the use of chlorine. Chlorine gas is what paper mills traditionally use to bleach paper fibers. While it does the trick, it also creates highly toxic byproducts that leak into the environment. These dioxins and furans can, among other things, cause cancer and birth defects in humans.

So, simply put, keep out the chlorine! All those acronyms are good things to see on a ream of paper. More specifically, here’s what each means.

PCF / PROCESSED CHLORINE-FREE is paper that is produced without elemental chlorine or chlorine derivatives, but it is unknown whether any recycled content was originally processed using chlorine. So if you’re buying recycled paper (like you should) the mill didn’t use chlorine when they transformed the recycled fibers into new paper. They just can’t attest to how the fibers were treated before they were put in the recycling bin.

TCF / TOTALLY CHLORINE-FREE means that instead of using chlorine in the bleaching process, the mill used oxygen-based compounds. Why would this be less preferable than PCF? Because in order for paper to be certified as TCF, it has to come from 100% virgin fibers. Unfortunately, you either need to get TCF paper or recycled paper—you can’t have both.

ECF / ELEMENTAL CHLORINE-FREE is bleached using chlorine dioxide instead of elemental chlorine. This is better by a long ways than traditionally bleached paper; chlorine dioxide use reduces the production of dioxin byproducts by 94%!

There are, of course, two other options. The first is traditionally bleached paper. Although this is often selected for visual appearance, we can’t really recommend this when it comes to creating an earth friendly package. The second is to opt for an unbleached stock. When Double 6 Design designs packaging, for example, we recommend using a stock that’s been coated white on the outside, but which is unbleached kraft on the inside. If it’s not bleached, there’s no need for chlorine in the first place.

Next up in our Green Series: what does FSC certification mean anyway?

How do you choose an environmentally friendly paper stock? Choosing the right paper for a print job requires any designer to consider a whole slew of variables: texture, brightness, weight, size, finish, color, and—of course—how the paper was sourced.

Ninety percent of paper pulp comes from wood. In fact, about a third of the trees felled around the world today are cut down to produce paper. Buying recycled paper helps reduce this deforestation by decreasing demand for virgin fiber. Additionally, producing paper from recycled pulp requires up to 55% less water than if a mill uses virgin pulp. Because paper production uses more water than most other industries, this savings in water adds up quickly.

Buying recycled paper is not as simple as it sounds, though. If you’ve shopped around, you’ll know that there are a few different categories of recycled paper.

MILL BROKE comes from the scrap collected within a paper mill during paper production. Making paper from mill broke is like scraping the bowl after you make cookie dough, so you can make one more cookie with the leftovers. Mill broke makes more efficient use of felled trees by using what would otherwise be wasted.

PRE-CONSUMER WASTE comes from paper that left the mill, but which never reached consumers. For example, if a printer runs a large job and trims off the edges, those edges are pre-consumer waste. Like mill broke, pre-consumer waste makes efficient use of resources by reclaiming unused paper and putting it back into the production process.

POST-CONSUMER WASTE comes from you and people like you. When you put your newspaper or old reports or phone books into the recycling bin, that’s post-consumer waste. Paper that’s 100% made from post-consumer waste calls for no virgin fibers and no deforestation.

Now, often paper is produced as a blend of recycled and non-recycled fibers. For example, New Leaf Paper lists some of its stock as “80% recycled, 60% post-consumer waste.” That means 60% of the paper comes from post-consumer waste, 20% from pre-consumer waste and/or mill broke, and 20% from virgin fibers.

Choosing what type and percentage of recycled content you’re comfortable with is up to you and, to some degree, what’s available in the market. At Double 6 Design, we’ve been buying a lot of our paper from New Leaf. They use higher percentages of post-consumer waster content, plus their paper is good quality and affordable.

Stay tuned for the next post in our Green Series, on chlorine-free paper processing. In the future we’ll also cover different environmentally friendly certifications and what to consider when choosing inks.

One day, many years ago, it occured to me that as a designer of packaging and print, I was a large contributor to our landfills. What a depressing thought, that everything we create, at some point in it’s life cycle, is thrown away. For a while I struggled with this issue, but I then decided that I could still do my part to be a green designer.

We have quite a few clients these days who are willing to pay a little extra to be gentler on the earth. The increased demand for greener options has created a search for new innovative materials, ways to cut down on excessive packaging, and the creation of lower-impact processes. The good news is that there are more and more printers who are capable of green printing, and everyday we hear about new options.

Since we’re all still learning about how we can do our part and it’s such an ever-evolving issue, we have decided to do some research and write a series of blogs dedicated to Green Design. Stay tuned….