LEADING BY EXAMPLE : HOW BUSINESSES ARE EXPANDING THE MARKET FOR ENVIRONMENTALLY

LEADING BY EXAMPLE
HOW BUSINESSES ARE EXPANDING THE
MARKET FOR ENVIRONMENTALLY
PREFERABLE PAPER
The Alliance for Environmental Innovation
A Project of the Environmental Defense Fund and The Pew Charitable Trusts

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LEADING BY EXAMPLE
HOW BUSINESSES ARE EXPANDING THE
MARKET FOR ENVIRONMENTALLY
PREFERABLE PAPER
A Report by
The Alliance for Environmental Innovation
A Project of the Environmental Defense Fund and The Pew Charitable Trusts
6 North Market Building • Faneuil Hall Marketplace • Boston, MA 02109
Phone: (617) 723-2996 Fax: (617) 723-2996
1875 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1016 • Washington, DC
Phone: (202) 387-3500 Fax: (202) 234-6049

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Authors
This report was researched and written by John Ruston, Heather O’Brien, and Linda
Tsang, with the assistance of consultant Jeanne Trombly.
Acknowledgments
Funding for this report was provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Pollution Prevention.
Disclaimer
This report does not imply endorsement of any company, product, or service mentioned in
the report. Trademarks and trade names are the property of their respective owners.
Paper Specifications
Printed on 100% postconsumer recycled paper. Totally chlorine-free manufacturing
process. 20 lb. basis weight text and 80 lb. basis weight cover stock.
© 1999 Alliance for Environmental Innovation

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CONTENTS
Introduction ............................................ 1
Bank of America Corporation............... 5
Ben & Jerry’s Homemade, Inc.............. 9
McDonald’s Corporation..................... 12
Time Inc................................................. 15
United Parcel Service............................ 19

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The Alliance for Environmental Innovation, created in partnership with The Pew
Charitable Trusts, works with business to create direct and measurable improvements in
the environment and business practices. We live in an age that demands creativity in
response to environmental problems. By forging direct, face-to-face relationships with
individual businesses, the Alliance blazes a new path toward environmentally sound, cost-
effective, sustainable solutions. We seek to catalyze new ways for the business community
to address environmental issues. Most important, this approach—working toward win–
win, leadership solutions—is a powerful way to achieve important results.
Fred Krupp, Executive Director, Environmental Defense Fund
The Alliance for Environmental Innovation is the product of a unique partnership between
two institutions that are committed to finding cost-effective, practical ways to help
American businesses improve their environmental performance. It is a powerful
partnership. By combining the experience and resources of one of the nation’s largest
environmental philanthropies with one of the country’s most respected environmental
organizations, the Alliance has a unique ability to assist businesses to better integrate
environmental concerns and criteria into their mainstream operations. Although
government will always play an important role in helping to set and enforce environmental
standards, it is increasingly apparent that additional efforts, beyond the regulatory system,
are needed to encourage and assist businesses to reduce environmental impacts. The
Alliance was established for this purpose and represents a potentially important tool for
helping both the environmental and business communities achieve common goals in the
years ahead.
Joshua Reichert, Director, Environment Program,
The Pew Charitable Trusts

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INTRODUCTION
Most businesses use paper. Some use a lot. In the past few years, a number of leading
companies have made innovative changes in their use of paper that reduce the
environmental impacts of paper manufacture and disposal and support their business
objectives. In this report, we briefly describe how five companies are expanding the
market for environmentally preferable paper. We hope that the examples they have set
will make it easier for other companies to do the same.
The companies featured in this report are:
Bank of America Corporation
Ben & Jerry’s Homemade, Inc.
McDonald’s Corporation
Time Inc.
United Parcel Service
This report does not cover everything these companies have done in the paper arena, but
describes their major initiatives and how they were put in place.
Environmental Opportunities in Paper Purchasing
The environmental impacts of using paper occur across the paper “life cycle”—from
forests, to pulp and paper mills, to points of use, to landfills and recycling centers. With
each of these impacts comes an opportunity for positive environmental change, change
that in many cases can either cut costs or be cost-neutral and can lead to better purchasing
practices. Businesses that use paper do not have to tackle every issue at once; the
important thing is to decide where your company can make a difference and then get to
work. Opportunities for expanding the market for environmentally preferable paper lie in
several areas.
Using Less Paper. The United States produces and consumes about one-third of the
world’s paper. Also known as “source reduction,” using less paper can take many forms.
McDonald’s, for example, “lightweighted” its french fry cartons and medium-size bags,
eliminating 1,850 tons of paper packaging per year. United Parcel Service (UPS)
introduced a two-way reusable overnight-shipping envelope. Every envelope that is
reused cuts in half the amount of paper required to package shipments. BankAmerica,
prior to its merger with NationsBank, employed information technology to replace printed
stock items with electronic communications and “print-on-demand” publications and
forms. The bank’s contracts with major suppliers of forms provided a financial incentive

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for the suppliers to help the bank find ways to reduce the quantity bought. As one
purchasing official at the bank noted, “When you cut out paper, you cut out cost.”
Recycling and Buying Recycled. Collecting paper for recycling and buying paper with
postconsumer recycled content go hand-in-hand. Ultimately, one cannot work without the
other. Recycling has many environmental benefits. It creates an alternative source of fiber
that reduces the overall demand for wood and lessens the pressure to convert natural
forests to tree plantations. At the mill, manufacturing paper from recycled content is
generally a cleaner, less resource-intensive process than making paper from wood fiber,
since much of the work of separating fibers from wood, bleaching the pulp, and so on was
done the first time around. Finally, well-designed recycling programs, especially in the
commercial sector, can reduce the costs of trash collection and disposal and extend the life
of available landfills.
McDonald’s and UPS are buying increasingly larger amounts of recycled paper:
McDonald’s uses recycled content in almost half of its food packaging; UPS recently
increased the recycled content in all its overnight-shipping packages by an average of
22%. Bank of America Corporation has initiated a nationwide paper recycling program,
the legacy of parts of both merger partners’ earlier paper recycling efforts. Depending on
paper prices, the bank can actually earn money by recycling paper.
Cleaner Paper Manufacturing
Manufacturing paper requires large amounts of wood, water, energy, and chemicals and
creates substantial waste by-products. Pulp and paper mills release harmful emissions into
the air from the combustion of wood and fossil fuels and from the pulping, bleaching, and
chemical-recovery processes. Paper manufacturing is the fourth largest source of the type
of air pollutants that contribute to respiratory problems. Water pollution from pulp and
paper mills is also significant. Among the pollutants are large quantities of “conventional”
pollutants like suspended solids and oxygen-depleting substances, which can harm or kill
fish and other aquatic organisms. Mills that use chlorine or chlorine-containing
compounds to bleach pulp release chlorinated organic by-products, which may include
dioxins and furans. Where possible, companies can reduce these impacts by choosing
white paper bleached using more benign methods or by replacing their white paper with
off-white, tan, brown, or gray paper. Many of these alternatives are also available with a
large percentage of recycled content.
UPS has committed to eliminating the use of bleached paper in all its overnight-shipping
packages. Ben & Jerry’s reduced the environmental impact of its pint ice-cream container
by switching from a bleached to an unbleached container, which is brown on the inside but
maintains its outside appearance because the package graphics are printed on a white clay
coating.
When the use of white paper is essential, as is the case for printing magazines and books,
companies can purchase paper that is bleached using a manufacturing process that fully or

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partially substitutes oxygen or oxygen compounds (ozone, hydrogen peroxide) for
elemental chlorine or chlorine compounds (sodium hypochlorite, chlorine dioxide). Time,
for example, imports bleached paper for its magazines from a Swedish paper manufacturer
that uses a totally chlorine-free bleaching process.
Better Forest Management Practices
Not all paper can be 100% recycled, so no matter how good your company is at “buying
recycled,” some paper will likely contain virgin fiber (fiber from trees). The wood used to
make virgin paper fiber is drawn from approximately 500 million acres of land in the
United States, an area almost three times the size of Texas. The way these forests are
managed has major consequences for endangered species and other wildlife, streams and
rivers, fisheries, the quality of outdoor recreation, and the preservation of natural
communities that compose America’s “natural heritage,” such as ancient forests and
coastal wetlands.
While some aspects of forest management can be complex, companies that purchase paper
have found ways to collect information from their paper suppliers, seek expert opinions,
and buy preferentially from manufacturers that follow the best forest management
practices.
Time conducts annual reviews of its suppliers and rewards those that demonstrate
environmentally superior performance on a range of activities, including forest
management. McDonald’s is developing a forestry scorecard that will rate its suppliers
based on their forestry management policies and operations.
Techniques for Success: What These Companies Have in Common
The companies described in this report come from a wide range of business sectors. Each
has changed its paper use practices in innovative ways that positively affect the
environment and their business. The specific improvements they have made reflect the
services and products that these firms offer. However, these five companies have several
important characteristics in common:
• They are brand leaders that understand that environmental innovation can be
consistent with business innovation.
• They have made a commitment to increase their knowledge of the environmental as
well as economic and practical issues associated with the manufacture, use, and
disposal of paper. To achieve this goal, the firms have worked with experts in the
paper industry, other companies that are seeking to purchase environmentally
preferable paper, and environmental organizations. As a result, these purchasers have
developed a better understanding of their paper suppliers and their purchasing options.
• They have sent clear, consistent signals to their suppliers about the types of
environmentally preferable products they are seeking to buy and the importance of
environmental factors in their purchasing decisions. In some cases, achieving a

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breakthrough has taken years, but once it happened, these companies backed up their
words with their purchasing dollars.


For More Information


This introduction provides a summary of complex environmental issues related to the
manufacture, use, and disposal of paper. Further research is recommended in order to
understand the full range of issues and steps your company can take to change the market
for environmentally preferable paper.


Many of the companies included in this report used the Paper Task Force
Recommendations for Purchasing and Using Environmentally Preferable Paper as a
reference guide when changing their paper use practices. The report resulted from
research done by the Paper Task Force, which included Duke University, Johnson &
Johnson, McDonald’s, The Prudential, Time Inc., and the Environmental Defense Fund
(EDF). It provides comprehensive details on the impacts of paper on the environment, as
well as recommendations for purchasing environmentally preferable paper. The report can
be found at http://www.edf.org/pubs/Reports/ptf/index.html or can be ordered by
contacting the Environmental Defense Fund at (212) 505-2100.


The Alliance for Environmental Innovation (Alliance), a project of EDF and The Pew
Charitable Trusts, has closely followed the progress of the companies profiled in this
report. Alliance staff are available to answer questions about the processes that the
companies went through and to offer suggestions to your company for moving forward.
You may contact the Alliance at (617) 723-2996 or visit our website at
http://www.edfpewalliance.org.


Reading the following case studies is a good way to start determining how to establish
paper purchasing and use practices in your company that will benefit the environment.

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