Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Guide to Buying “Green” Paper

28 Nov 2007
Brussels, Belgium – From packaging paper to office paper and tissues, the WWF Guide to Buying Paper makes it easy for any organization to understand the most important environmental impacts of paper-making and to source responsibly-produced paper products, thus reducing their environmental footprint.

The new guide — launched today at the European paper industry’s annual Paper Week — includes a scorecard that enables buyers to evaluate the environmental performance of current and future suppliers on recycling, responsible forest management, pollution and climate change.

The guide also provides recommendations on how to work with suppliers towards improvements.

Taking responsibility
Paper has been an integral part of our cultural development and is essential for modern life. But the world´s paper consumption has quadrupled in the last 40 years and is growing further.

This tremendous expansion threatens the last remaining natural forests, and the people and wildlife who depend on them, in many regions around the world. Pulp and paper processing also releases vast amounts of greenhouse gases and a wide range of polluting compounds into the environment.

"Paper buyers and producers need to take responsibility for their activities," said Duncan Pollard, WWF International's Conservation Practice and Policy Director.

"We will now intensify the work with organizations buying large amounts of paper to implement the recommendations outlined in the new guide. It is important that paper buyers influence their suppliers to minimize their environmental impacts on biodiversity loss, climate change and water and air pollution.”

Responsible buying
The need for a buyers' guide to responsible paper purchasing and use emerged from discussions WWF had with a number of major paper buyers: Canon, IKEA, Lafarge, McDonald’s and Unilever. Other buyers have also expressed interest in the new WWF tools.

"We welcome these new WWF initiatives in enhancing the environmental performance of the paper industry," said Bob Latham from the Paper Merchant Robert Horne.

"They help to improve transparency and data access. It is vital that paper producers and suppliers provide sufficient and verifiable information to buyers so that they can make informed choices. The WWF Paper Guide can certainly help here."

Tetra Pak sees the WWF Guide for Buying Paper as an important tool for understanding the environmental performance of the forest and paper industries.

"The guide provides comparable data for buyers and decision-makers," said Lena Dahl, Forest Policy Officer at Tetra Pak International.

"Tetra Pak has been assessing its global paper board suppliers' performance for a number of years, evaluating nearly the same parameters. We are now investigating whether we can take some lessons from the WWF Paper Scorecard and incorporate these into our supplier evaluation."

"The Scorecard captures a selection of important environmental parameters and presents them in a way that is easy to understand," added Björn Lyngfelt, Vice President of Communications at SCA Forest Products.

"We have applied the scoring system on its products and will make the results available to its customers. As for all market instruments, at the end of the day it is the paper customers that will decide the usefulness of the Scorecard.”

WWF will credit transparency and responsibility of paper buyers and producers by offering its new Paper Toolbox as a web-based “meeting place” and resource centrr on environmental issues.

Read the guide and get more information at Panda.org

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