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May 30, 2007

A Personal Problem With Paper

Let's start this out with a bad haiku about recycling paper products, shall we?

Flattened Tree Remains
Stacked Precariously High
Our Landfills Abound

Nowadays recycled paper products can be anything from specialty papers like elephant poop stationary to recycled material copy and printer paper that is virtually impossible to tell from the standard kind.

Recycled paper products don't just limit the number of trees felled for the care and feeding of your pet printer. Making paper from existing paper means less processing of the tree pulp is needed, and let me tell you, paper processing is a messy business. Also, few papers are 100% recycled materials, because virgin pulp is often needed to keep the paper fibers strong enough to bond.

Truthfully, the best thing you can do here is reduce the total amount of paper you use in the first place. When paper is required, here are some options. Also, I've made some I made ListMania! Lists on Amazon.com for Green Living household paper products, baby & nursery supplies and feminine products.

Kitchen Paper Products

When I looked at what paper products we used in our kitchen, I admit there is not much we can improve upon - but there is always something.

I'm lucky. Paper plates, cups and napkins and plastic utensils never featured in our home while I was growing up. For as long as I can remember, my mother has had washable patioware - plastic plates that could be washed and reused for years. These inexpensive plates cost little more than a package or two of paper plates, so they pay for themselves quickly.

Cloth napkins have always been the norm for us as well. We have many, many different patterns and use them for napkins, to clean up spills, and various other things. They only cost a dollar or two to make yourself, or you can buy them. I'm still surprised when people are afraid to get them dirty. Most are darker, brightly colored patterns and I have yet to have a stain that didn't disappear after a washing.

If you have to use disposables, I've seen some recycled materials ones floating around in the market lately, like Preserve Plateware made from recycled plastic yogurt cups (also dishwasher safe so you can reuse them for a while), or Seventh Generation recycled-material paper plates.

The one paper product we do use in the kitchen is the paper towel and even those are only used as a last resort after the cloth kitchen towels. Usually I buy these paper towels at Costco, but they don't have unbleached paper towels. I just found out that Amazon grocery has Seventh Generation paper towels for substantially less than Costco's Bounty bulk packs. They also have specialty products for babies and women.

You should also remember to limit the cardboard packaging you go through. Buy in bulk and try to avoid single serving varieties of packaging, instead favoring the larger versions.

Bathroom Paper Products

Bathroom paper products are a (forgive the pun) touchy subject. As a person with allergies, I have tried the cheaper brands of facial tissue only to give myself a red nose. Other people swear by certain TP brands. The trick here, I think, is to experiment. Buy a single roll of a new, greener brand when you can, and give it a try. Just like any consumer product, you may need to shop around. Another idea is to use it only in a less frequently used space, like a guest room, where people are unlikely to complain from repetitive usage problems, if you know what I mean.

I am pretty brand loyal to Kleenex, despite the fact that they use only new fibers for "superior softness", but at least the boxes are made from recycled materials. I also hope to see them using fewer chemicals in their manufactoring process on some of their lines. I really don't care what color my tissues are, provided they work.

When we were kids, we had Dixie cups in the bathroom with our favorite cartoon characters. We went through at least a couple a day (2 kids, several drinks and brushings). That adds up fast! Swapping out your Mickey Mouse paper cups for a set of Mickey Mouse dishwasher safe plastic cups will save not only the paper used in the cups, but the packaging, and your time shopping. Just make sure they're dishwasher safe, so you can throw them in once in a while. This is another case of the cups paying for themselves quickly. If you want to have the cups around for guests and such, make sure your kids know to take one cup a day, and to use it throughout the day.

In addition to Seventh Generation, Whole Foods and other more mainstream brands are starting to carry bathroom paper products with at least some portion of recycled materials.

Other Health Products

It's pretty safe to say that anything made of paper or cotton is going to have a green alternative product choice nowadays. Anything fibrous and white is often bleached and treated. Products like cotton balls, swabs, diapers and feminine products all have green options. Organic Essentials is a personal care brand with a green mission.

Office Supplies

It's a sad fact that most office workers will waste more at work than they do at home because they're not paying for it. But in truth, we all pay for it, on a larger scale - landfills are community property, after all. Once it gets there, we all own it.

Firstly, one of the best things you can do in terms of office supplies is to make some corporate policies on consumption.

Some companies do this by giving people and departments codes to the copy machine and such. Others have multiple printers - a final draft one with slick marketing paper, and a draft printer which uses more eco-friendly paper products and inks for internal use that don't have to last forever, where the printers default to printing both sides. Putting a recycle bin near the printer also helps.

You can also provide methods for people to store and share digital documents instead of printing them to read them. In a personal office, signing up for online bill pay will reduce the paper statements you get in the mail, and you can store them on your hard drive instead.

Recycled paper mailing supplies and printing papers are pretty readily available these days, and seem to look and act just like their bleached newly-treed equivalents.

Also remember that your standard office also needs to consider kitchen and bath products, just like a household does. Nowadays there are even green cleaning agencies around.

Posted by sorsha at May 30, 2007 2:16 PM