Live from GCIC: Little reason not to use recycled paper

Naples, FL—Catalogers have few excuses for not using more recycled paper. That was the thrust of a presentation for Victoria Mills, project manager for nonprofit group Environmental Defense, at the Gravure Catalog and Insert Conference (GCIC) here.

The goal of the catalog industry, Mills said, should be to make printing on 10% post-recycled content the standard. Availability and printability are no longer barriers to use of more recycled paper, she declared. And while mailers can achieve price parity while printing on recycled paper, she noted that “we need economies of scale to get better prices.”

Mills urged catalogers to commit to using recycled paper and suppliers to take creative approaches and create partnerships as ways of driving down prices. Manufacturers could facilitate this through long-term agreements with suppliers of deinked pulp and by investing in their suppliers, she said.

But during the question-and-answer session at the end of the presentation, several suppliers said that high demand typically drives prices up, rather than down. Mills replied that pulp suppliers are so undercapacity that they are far from reaching the threshold where demand would cause prices to rise.