Practical information for consumers on going green.
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Sunday, January 19, 2003
In my last blog, I said I'd written to Annie Chun's about using recycled paperboard packaging. Here's the response I received.
Dear Beth,
Thank you very much for your note, and for expressing your concern regarding our packaging.
Annie Chun's is a relatively small producer of Asian noodles and sauces, but we are making efforts to minimize our impact on the environment. Our cardboard packaging is actually made from recycled paperboard containing 35 - 70% post consumer waste. Our packaging supplier strives to use 70% post consumer waste paperboard for our boxes but has advised us that we may sometimes receive 35% post consumer waste board when 70% is not available.
Based on this, we are beginning to label our boxes with the following statement:
"Printed on recycled paperboard. Made from 35% post consumer waste."
I hope that this information is helpful to you and that you may enjoy our products again in the future. Thank you again for writing to us and for sharing your thoughts.
With best wishes,
Anja Hakoshima
Annie Chun's Inc.
Consumer Service Support
posted by Beth at 6:22 PM
bapartin@yahoo.com
Saturday, January 11, 2003
Recycled paper where you never thought it could be
All of us have heard of recycling office paper, right? And we know about recycling newspapers--my parents were taking their old newspaper to church recycling drives in the 1970s. But have you ever wondered what happens to that recycled paper?
What many of us don't realize is that to truly make recycling work, we need to buy recycled products--in this case, paper. Where can we do that?
Take newspaper. Most of the newspaper recycled ends up in another newspaper or a telephone book. However, it can also be made into cellulose insulation that can be blown into the walls of your home or cladwood siding and trim. A Home Depot advertising supplement from 2001 says that they sell 179,251 sheets of cladwood a year, thus saving 4,169 trees. Of course, if we really wanted to save trees, we would recycle all our newspapers. Just recycling all our Sunday papers would save half a million trees every week, or 26 million per year. (For more recycling factoids like the previous one, go to www.ecocycle.org and click on Tidbits and Facts. Eco-Cycle is the largest nonprofit recycler in the United States.)
And, of course, we can buy office paper made from recycled paper in just about any office supply store. I think I've also seen it at Target. Making paper from something besides trees is nothing new. Until the twentieth century, paper was made from things like rags and hemp (a plant related to pot that cannot legally be grown in the United States). Then paper makers decided that making wood from trees was better, and from what I've heard, they even helped to criminalize drugs so that they would have less competition from hemp paper. Paper can also be made from the banana plant. To find some recycled paper for yourself, go to Mama's Earth at www.mamasearth.com. If you're a business in Colorado, try Eco-Cycle's Buy Recycled Network at the URL already given above. Or you can go online and search for "buy recycled paper."
To my mind, these are the obvious things to do. What's most interesting to me is the the less obvious thing. So the other day I went to my local King Sooper's (owned by Kroger, I believe) and checked a few items on the shelves. Generally when I do things like this, I get frustrated because there's no reason that every Kleenex box and every pasta box can't be made from recycled paper (this kind of paper is called light cardboard or paperboard in the recycling industry). But few are.
A box of Annie Chun's noodles, for example, said, "Please recycle." But nothing indicated that that packaging was made from recycled materials. I sent the company an email asking why they want me to recycle if they're not willing to buy recycled products. I'll let you know what they say.
However, Annie's Homegrown packaging is 100% recycled and is made from 35% postconsumer paper. So is De Boles. No doubt, if I went through the store aisle by aisle, I could find a few more examples. (One bright spot was the box of Sun-Maid California Golden Raisins, which had 50% postconsumer content.) It makes me sad to see how few there are, because as a volunteer for Eco-Cycle, I know that paperboard recycling is unprofitable for recyclers. If big companies would make their packaging from recycled paperboard, then maybe organizations like Eco-Cycle could make some money off collecting it. Then they could expand their other programs. See? We're all connected to Annie Chun.
I'll give you a few more examples of ways to buy recycled paper, and then I'll leave you alone for the rest of your weekend. My local King Sooper's offers two brands of recycled Kleenex, toilet paper, and paper towels, Green Forest and Seventh Generation. (Seventh Generation also makes laundry detergent.) Green Forest is cheaper, but its products generally have about 10% postconsumer recycled content, whereas Seventh Generation's have 80% postconsumer content. And yes, you will pay more for more postconsumer content. Another good thing about Seventh Generation is that their white paper products have not been bleached with chlorine.
I recommend using the toilet paper and the paper towels from either company. The Kleenex is not the softest in the world, but if you don't have a cold, it's OK. The toilet paper is soft enough; it won't give you burning asshole disease (BAD). And Green Forest makes paper napkins. If you can't manage to use cloth napkins, then buy Green Forest recycled paper napkins!
One last note: "postconsumer" content toilet paper is not made from used toilet paper. Somebody asked me that once. Used toilet paper goes down the sewer pipe with all the other sewage sludge. It is not made into recycled paper.
posted by Beth at 10:42 AM
bapartin@yahoo.com
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