It’s true that many businesses have stopped using paper products in support of “Go paperless. Go green.” campaigns. And in today’s digital age, this transition has only become easier as businesses ditch traditional marketing methods, such as direct mail, to focus on digital tactics.
But direct mail is making a comeback, and statistics from the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) show that millennials actually prefer it. According to Two Sides, a non-profit dedicated to promoting the sustainable attributes of print, paper, and paper-based packaging, paper products do not contribute in any major way to climate change.
Here’s why:
Most of the energy used to manufacture paper products is generated using renewable, carbon-neutral biomass.
While the life cycle of paper does involve the emission of carbon, the carbon released from burning biomass doesn’t contribute to climate change, while the carbon released from fossil fuel does. Biomass is carbon that’s absorbed from the atmosphere and stored in trees and other vegetation through photosynthesis.
When that biomass layer decays or burns, whether naturally or in a paper mill, its carbon returns back to the atmosphere in an endless natural cycle, resulting in no new carbon added to the environment.
Humans have been burning biomass as a primary source of energy and heat for millennia. But, paleoclimatologists have found that greenhouse gases didn’t begin to drastically increase until the industrial revolution with its dependency on fossil fuels.
The pulp and paper industry contributes to less than 1% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The U.S. paper industry was among the first to take voluntary action to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. By 2020, U.S. paper companies had reduced GHG emissions per ton of product by 24.1% from a 2005 baseline — switching from coal and oil to less carbon-intensive fossil fuels was a large reason for this reduction.
Recycling avoids the release of greenhouse gases when paper decomposes in landfills. Greenhouse gases in the U.S. were lowered by 155 million metric tons of CO2e in 2018, the equivalent of removing over 33 million cars off the road for an entire year. Paper and paper products should be used, but it’s crucial to responsibly dispose of them via recycling.
To learn more about paper products and climate change, find additional resources from Two Sides. And if you and your business would like to know more about sustainable catalog printing and distribution, please reach out to our team at The Dingley Press today.
