Debate over recycled paper intensifies

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Sept 15, 1993 by Paul McDougall

Amid a possible Justice Department probe of the big papermakers, and reports of pressure on industry dissidents, consumer and environmental groups are squaring off against the paper and publishing establishment in a rancorous debate over just what, exactly, can be called a recycled product.

At the center of the high-stakes ruckus is a forthcoming executive order from the Clinton Administration that is expected to set guidelines for government purchases of recycled products, including printing papers. Most observers expect that the new standards will eventually spill over into the private sector, where consumer groups, environmentalists and manufacturers have been searching for years for a yardstick against which supposedly Earth-friendly goods can be measured.

With that in mind, parties ranging from powerful trade associations such as the Magazine Publishers of America and the American Forest & Paper Association, to watchdogs like Greenpeace and Ralph Nader's Center for the Study of Responsible Law, are busily lobbying the White House and lawmakers.

On one side of the debate, the MPA, the AFPA, most papermakers, and a number of large publishers, including Time Inc. and Meredith Corp., are seeking executive approval of practices that give paper manufacturers significant leeway in deciding what to throw into the recycling cauldron. Specifically, those groups prefer that Clinton endorse a standard whereby recycled printing paper would include at least 50 percent of what's known as total recovered fiber, and/or 10 percent post-consumer waste. (Beyond office refuse and discarded newspapers and magazines, total recovered fiber includes paper untouched by consumers, such as scraps and leftovers from the papermaking process.) By sanctioning this approach, MPA executives argue, the government can encourage recycling in the private sector without being overly rigid.

"It's not technically feasible to have an extremely high standard for coated stock," says Christopher Little, vice president/publishing director at Meredith's magazine division and the MPA's representative at a public forum in Washington this past March. "The fiber tends to break down." Little further asserts that any standards mandating both relatively high total recovered and post-consumer content aren't feasible because "there are just not enough big machines out there making that kind of paper." Adoption of those stricter standards, he says, "would prevent publishers who are trying their best to use recycled paper from calling it that."

Not so, say the environmentalists. The Sierra Club and Washington-based Environmental Action Foundation, among others, are pushing a plan under which recycled printing paper would include 30 percent total fiber and 10 percent post-consumer, eliminating the "and/or" option. Through an ad hoc effort dubbed The Paper Definitions Working Group, the environmentalists are also seeking a definition of post-consumer that would preclude many of the materials, such as printed but unsold magazines, that the big papermakers want to include.

Thus far in the debate, the environmentalists appear to have the ear of the Administration, and then some. In July, federal officials circulated an internal draft order calling for 50 percent total recovered fiber and 15 percent post-consumer fiber for government purchases of printing paper. Meanwhile, a small but growing number of mills are adopting a stance that puts them firmly in the environmentalists' camp.

Executives from Niagara of Wisconsin Paper Corporation, a supplier of printing papers that contain as much as 30 percent post-consumer content, wrote in a letter to Wisconsin Senator Russell Feingold: "It would appear as though the White House is going forward with a narrowly defined post-consumer requirement. Niagara Paper has no problem with this approach."

Niagara is not the only mill to have publicly challenged the AFPA's recycling position. St. Paul, Minnesota-based Cross Pointe, which like Niagara is a subsidiary of Pentair Inc., broke ranks in March and announced it would support the stricter standards endorsed by the Paper Definitions Working Group. But since then, according to Eleanor Lewis, director of the Government Purchasing Project at Nader's group, Cross Pointe has backed down in the face of "coercion" from AFPA officials.

Cross Pointe head Bob Touchette did not return calls, but one company executive, Jobe Morrison, concedes that "we have gone back and forth on that." Morrison is president of Cross Pointe's Miami division in West Carrollton, Ohio, and was a member of the Working Group. Curiously, Morrison now says that he is unaware of his company's position on recycling. He denies, however, reports by industry insiders that Cross Pointe higher-ups threatened him with termination if he did not soften his position on recycling.

But Nader, Lewis and officials from four environmental groups aren't convinced. They recently dispatched a letter to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno requesting that the Justice Department undertake a far-reaching "investigation of all members of the American Forest & Paper Association's Printing-Writing Paper Division for possible contravention of the antitrust laws relating to product fixing."