A reader’s green question, answered :)
A new weekly series! One day, I’ll have one for every day of the week. In this series, I’ll tackle a Q from a reader looking for green advice.
Question
Hey Siel — Do you know anywhere I can get green office supplies on the West side? I want to print out some cards and it would at least be nice to do it on recycled paper or non-tree based paper. Also, maybe soy ink for my inkjet? Is there such a thing?
I know you are the master of this domain, so I thought I’d ping you to see.
Thanks.
Drew
Answer
So it seems your main goals to get eco-friendly cards. What cards’re we talking about? If you mean business cards, may I start by suggest my cereal box biz card route? We’re talking 100% post-consumer recycled biz cards!
However, I have a very sturdy laser printer, while you clearly have an inkjet, which may not be so cereal-box-friendly. In addition, I’m wondering if you’re talking about greeting cards, which are a different beast altogether…
Let’s start with the recycled paper. If you wanna buy the stuff at a physical store, you might first try xpedx Paper and Graphics. This company’s based in Chicago, but it has a West LA branch at 2101 S. Barrington. I believe each store has a good selection of recycled paper and other office supplies.
If you’re more desparate, you can actually get 100% recycled paper with a decent post-consumer content from many big box companies, including Staples. The selection might not be huge, but maybe basic paper’s just what you need.
If you’re willing to buy online, my first suggestion for staying as local as possible would be Green Earth Office Supply, based in Redwood Estates, Calif. This company has a whole lotta different green office products, including lotsa paper. If that doesn’t work, try Waldeck’s Office Supplies in San Francisco, or Aha-Yes! in Mountain View, Calif.
About the soy ink for your inkjet: As far as I can tell, this is still a dream in the making, at least at the consumer level. An org called Batelle seems to have the tech, but this tech hasn’t yet been translated to actual consumer products.
My suggestion, for now, would be to go for a cartridge refill, instead of buying a new cartridge. Cartridge World, which’ll refill your cartridge in 5-10 mins, may be your best option; just plug in your zip to find an outlet near you.
Perhaps the easiest solution would be to have a green company print your cards for you. Some Cali-based ones are Community Printers in Santa Cruz, Ink Works Press in Berkeley, and New Leaf Paper in San Francisco.
Hope this is helpful — Lemme know how those options go!
In printing solidarity,
Siel
I love the question thing - I’m thinking I might have to use it as a jumping off point to find my own local sources for stuff. I live in Canada, and in a relatively small city at that, so a lot of what gets written about here isn’t really immediately accessible to me (or requires excessive and not-so-environmentally friendly shipping.) But, I’ve been thinking about business cards for a bit now, so I may have to try my hand at making my own (although, given I don’t have my own printer, I may be at the mercy of whatever industrial ink source is in use.) Thanks for the inspiration, though.
Comment by Jenn — November 26, 2006 @ 9:09 am
Isn’t recycling paper more enviromentallt damaging then using paper from sustainable forests. Due to the bleachs used to de-colour recycled paper being highly toxic and requiring a lot of work and transport to actually make the paper. While trees in sustainable forests are merly a crop like wheat, Barley etc etc.
Comment by simon — November 26, 2006 @ 10:40 am
Simon, recycling paper uses less energy than making brand new paper, and you can get unbleached options.
Comment by Jasmin — November 28, 2006 @ 9:37 am
I’ve been going to Cartidge World to refill cartridges for my office for the past year or so. It’s a great place with fast service, and the refills are half the price of buying them new. Plus I love that there’s no waste from the old cartridges!
Comment by Sarah Holzgraf — November 28, 2006 @ 11:51 am
Thanks Jenn — Lemme know how the biz cards quest works out :)
Thanks Jasmin, for responding to simon’s usual uninformed debbie downer comment.
Sarah — I feel like I’ve been waiting to try Cartridge World forever — I have a laser printer, and the cartridges last a really long time! It’s a good thing, but one day, I’ll try Cartridge World out too :)
Comment by Siel — November 28, 2006 @ 11:56 am
I don’t know if this comment was banned or not but I will try posting it from a different OS.
Thanks Jasmin, for responding to simon’s usual uninformed debbie downer comment.
From Friends of the Earth
A number of life cycle analyses (LCAs) have been published comparing the environmental impact of waste paper recycling and incineration. Of these, some conclude that under certain conditions paper recycling has less environmental impact than incineration [29;30]. Others conclude the opposite[31;32].
In 1996 the International Institute for Environment and Development produced its report “Towards a Sustainable Paper Cycle†[33] which presented the results from a number of LCAs. In most cases a recycling scenario resulted in lower total energy use. As discussed above (under the section on energy) the energy used was predominantly obtained from fossil fuels.
In general, the release of net CO2 equivalents was higher in the recycled scenarios compared to the incineration scenarios. This is because incineration can be used to produce energy and thus offset a given amount of fossil fuel use and CO2 production. However, the more recent study from the US Environmental Protection Agency, noted above, shows recycling produces less CO2 equivalents than incineration[34].
For air and water emissions no clear picture emerged. The two studies that favoured recycling did so on the basis of changes in air and water pollution releases. Those that favoured incineration based their argument on reductions in CO2 equivalents.
The IIED study concluded that:
“Most of the studies support the view that recycling and incineration are environmentally preferable to landfill. There is less agreement on whether recycling is preferable to incineration. Critical factors are the nature of the pulp and paper making process, the level of technology at all stages of the life cycle and the energy structure of the countries under study. Interpretation also plays a role in weighing up of increases in some emissions against reductions in others.â€
Comment by simon — November 29, 2006 @ 10:45 am
Emm you may have a problem with comments posted in Linux.
Anyway here is the link. For the above article
Comment by simon — November 29, 2006 @ 10:46 am
No, your comment was not banned. Must be a Linux snafu. The link’s not coming through, but from the excerpt you quoted, it looks like the study was done a full decade ago. In any case, I’m not sure how this discredits anything Jasmin said — and it certainly doesn’t make a case for not using recycled paper.
I guess after reading such a study, my impetus would be to buy non-chlorine bleached recycled paper and to push for fewer chemicals in recycling. You, on the other hand, seem to advocate avoiding recycled paper (and recycling, by proxy) altogether. That’s what I mean ’bout the debbie downer-ness of your comments in general. Inaction and apathy, even if intellectualized, are still inaction and apathy.
Comment by Siel — December 6, 2006 @ 9:20 am