Green Printing-The New Bottom Line

Many forget that little over a century ago, when paper was primarily made from recycled rags, arguments raged about whether paper made from wood pulp was fit for use as a printing substrate. Today over 3.5 million people are employed in the wood pulp, paper, and paper converting industries worldwide and magazine publishers are responsible for buying over 1 million tons of paper made primarily from virgin wood fiber each year. That's a small slice of the more than 100 million tons of paper used annually in the United States. But responsible magazine publishers can have an impact on the paper market far greater than the megatons of paper they buy at present. In the words of John Mack Carter, former editor-in-chief of Good Housekeeping, "A magazine is not just a pound of paper. A magazine is a bunch of people with special interests and ideas communicating with a larger group who share the dedication to those interests." Magazines inform and entertain us. They shape our culture and our consumption patterns with editorial and advertising.Approximately 12 billion magazines are printed annually in the U.S. According to a recent Magazine Publishers of America study, the top 25 magazines reach more adults than the top 25 TV programs and Web sites combined. That's a lot of power and influence.With that power and influence comes responsibility for thinking strategically about what the product—magazines—are made of. Such responsibility calls for strategies that balance the "triple bottom line" goals of economic prosperity, environmental quality and social justice. This will require a new sensitivity to the interests of investors, customers, employees, suppliers, environmental groups, regulators and other stakeholders. It will also require new skills in life-cycle cost analysis, environmental accounting and supply chain environmental management. Over the past 30 years, the forestry and paper industries have made great strides in improving their environmental performance. And many have made significant commitments to sustainability's triple bottom line goals. Driven by government, private-sector and voluntary initiatives, paper recovery rates have risen from 23% in 1970 to over 45% in 2001. Yet papermaking remains the third largest industrial use of fossil fuels, and the #1 industrial use of water per pound of product. Scarcity of these resources is expected to increase as demand for paper is expected to grow 50% by the year 2010. Consumer, investor and stakeholder pressure for corporate environmental responsibility is also mounting. There are implications for publishers. Now is the time for publishers to use their awesome power and influence to help create a sustainable future for magazines and for the substrates they are printed on. One strategy is to use current resources more wisely. Global consumption of wood fiber for papermaking can be cut by more than 50% through a combination of reduced paper consumption, improving papermaking efficiency and expanding. A new confluence of market and regulatory forces is likely to make managing and reporting environmental costs as important to publishers as paper price and quality are today. In November of 2002, over 50 non-profit organizations working on paper, recycling and forestry issues met in Petaluma, Calif., to draft a Common Vision for achieving an environmentally and socially sustainable paper industry. The resulting Common Vision (www.conservatree.com) is likely to spawn a new flurry of well- coordinated initiatives encouraging publishers to balance economic, environmental and social factors related to paper use. One example is The PAPER Project (www.ecopaperaction.org) a joint effort of Conservatree, the Independent Press Association and Co-op America. It's dedicated to providing magazine publishers with tools and resources they need to adopt environmentally preferable alternatives. Tools include an online Paper Wizard to help publishers calculate how their paper use impacts forests. In addition, they bestow EcoPaper Leadership Awards on standouts like Rodale Press that meet or exceeds EPA guidelines for recycled paper purchasing in an industry where more than 95% of the paper used has no recycled content at all. Environmental groups are not the only influencers publishers should be paying attention to. Some of the world's largest publishers can expect a more active influence on corporate governance priorities and strategies related to the environment from shareholders, according to a report published by the Rose Foundation titled The Environmental Fiduciary.The report presents compelling evidence connecting environmental performance with positive influence on financial performance. It finds institutional investors have a responsibility to take an active role in setting corporate governance priorities with regard to environmental performance. In addition, new SEC rules mandating registered investment advisers and mutual fund managers to disclose their proxy votes are likely to increase the influence that environmental groups and socially responsible investment funds have on publishers' strategic priorities.Raising awareness of the supply chain's environmental impact, and implementing systems to manage environmental performance will be a challenge for many publishers. The stakes are high, but the rewards for leadership are great. At stake are brand reputations, shareholder value, regulatory risk and the opportunity for magazine publishers to align their strategies with the corporate citizenship priorities of the world's major advertisers. As consumers and advertisers become influenced, educated and more interested in environmental performance, publishers need to lead the charge, or be ready to respond rapidly to new priorities. A growing body of evidence from major advertisers such as Anheuser Busch, Bristol-Myers Squib, British Telecom, CitiGroup, DuPont, Dow Chemical, Hewlett Packard, Intel, Procter & Gamble and others show it's possible to save money, grow markets and create shareholder value when supply chain environmental management is approached proactively. There are no good reasons for magazine publishers to stand idly by. The best practices of 37 global multinationals that have successfully integrated environmental considerations with supply chain decisions has been compiled into a report, New Paths to Business Value published by the Global Environmental Management Initiative (www.gemi.org). Publishers were notably absent from the roster, which includes Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, Johnson & Johnson and Mattel. The report presents a great opportunity for publishers to study the body of evidence and tools that GEMI developed. Another group of stakeholders that publishers must consider are the employees responsible for magazine substrate specification and purchase decisions. Although the primary factors employed by buyers are price and quality, their interest in energy conservation, greenhouse gas reduction and environmental protection is growing. Paper buyers are increasingly expressing their personal interest in the environmental impacts of the purchasing decisions they make. But their job performance continues to be measured primarily on getting the best price. That must change. Market leaders in other industries have learned that change is possible and that profitability and environmentalism can go hand in hand. They establish rewards and recognition for purchase decisions that improve environmental performance and competitiveness. They also provide education and training in environmental lifecycle analysis, so buyers can make more informed decisions. Knowledge of environmental accounting principles allows buyers to build sound business cases for specifying green alternatives. Executives and line managers need to be informed of best practices developed by groups like GEMI. They also need to familiarize themselves with guidelines and emerging standards for the selection and rating of suppliers on the basis of environmental and social performance. International environmental standards, such as the ISO's 1400I (ISO.org) and Global Performance and Reporting Initiatives (GRI.org), along with market-based emission trading schemes such as the Chicago Climate Exchange (ChicagoClimatEx.com) are gaining momentum. Magazine publishing is among the most influential of all industries. Few industries wield comparable influence on business organizations, governments, children, teens, young adults and parents. This influence demands strategies that balance the economic, environmental and social bottom lines. So here are some questions to ask your printing and paper suppliers:• Ask how they can help your company implement, measure, manage and report on environmental performance improvements. • Ask how much time their CEOs spend leading environmental performance initiatives.• Ask if and how executives and managers who improve their company's environmental and social performance are rewarded and recognized.• Ask how they measure the environmental lifecycle impacts of the products and services that you buy from them. According to author Anil K. Gupta "Strategy is the art and science of creating the future, managing the present and selectively forgetting the past." In the end, publishers must ask themselves if their bottom line priorities are based on smart and sustainable substrate strategies.-Don CarliDon Carli (Carli@NimaHunter.com) is president of Nima Hunter Inc., inNew York.

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Green Printing-The New Bottom Line

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