The post Toshiba pulls National No Print Day first appeared on The Paper Story (PAMSA).

Press release from the issuing company

“Toshiba may have meant well when it attempted to publicize its ‘print leaner and greener’ initiative with a ‘National No-Print Day’ campaign, but it was well off base when it pointed a finger at print as an anti-tree medium,” said National Association for Printing Leadership (NAPL) President and Chief Executive Officer Joseph P. Truncale, Ph.D. “Despite this all-too-often repeated anti-print “save a tree” refrain, print and paper are simply not enemies of the environment.

“Reading a book on a tablet may be convenient, but it is not more environmentally friendly than reading a printed copy,” he continued. “Paying a bill online may be quicker, but it is not better for the woodlands than paying it by check. Why? Because paper is a renewable, recyclable, and biodegradable resource, while computers and other electronic devices are comprised primarily of one-time-use only metals and hydrocarbon-based materials, and they require energy created principally through the use of other non-renewable resources.”

NAPL has long pointed out that paper production uses trees, but it does not destroy forests. Paper companies depend on trees for their business, so they plant more trees than they harvest each year, carefully managing forests on privately owned lands for maximum tree growth and production.

In fact, despite the billions of sheets of paper that have been produced, the United States has about 12 million more acres of forest land now than it did a quarter of a century ago, and overall forest inventory has increased 49% over the last half-century. Every day, more than 1.7 million trees are planted in the U.S., nearly half of them (45%) by the forest products industry. You might say that every printed page helps plant a tree. By comparison, according to Time magazine, more than 130,000 computers are discarded by Americans every day.

The problem at landfills is not paper, which is recycled at very high levels, providing many towns and cities with an important income source. The real waste problem is the rapidly escalating number of discarded computers and other electronic components, which are not biodegradable and will sit in landfills for generations, taking up increasing amounts of space and ultimately leaching lead, mercury, and other toxic metals, hazardous chemicals, and plastic residue into the soil. Electronics now make up the fastest-growing part of the U.S. waste stream.

Everyone in the printing industry has the same interest as Toshiba in making our processes as environmentally friendly as possible, and we have all been working toward that goal for decades. Witness, for example, the growth of forest-certification and chain-of-custody programs, the new technologies that increase the paper yield per trees—in some cases, 90,000 sheets from a single cord of wood, and the use of renewable biomass fuels to power paper manufacturing—since 1990, purchased energy and fossil fuel use per ton of paper production has been cut by 26%.

As NAPL stated in an article two years ago, “The environmental impact of any communications process generally occurs at one or more of three stages: the creation of the medium being used for the message, the transmission of the message, and the conclusion or aftermath of the process. At each point, paper-based communications have a less injurious environmental effect than their electronic counterpart. Print and electronic media will coexist in the future and complement each other’s strengths. And one of paper‘s undeniable strengths is its position as an environmentally friendly messaging medium.”

Whatever Toshiba’s well-intentioned environmental goals may be,” said Truncale, “it is simply short-sighted and wrong-headed to suggest that the environment is harmed by the use of paper and printing.”

In Brief:

• Paper is a renewable resource, grown and replenished in managed forests; the precious metals and hydrocarbons required to create computers and other electronic devices are not—they require mining and drilling that can damage the surrounding ecosystem, and when they have been removed from the earth, they are gone forever.
• Paper is recyclable—nearly two-thirds of U.S. paper consumed is now recovered—and much is reused, more than one-third of the world’s total fiber supply now coming from recycled paper; computer components are used once—often after just a few years of rapid obsolescence—and then this toxic e-waste is discarded in landfills or shipped to developing countries.
• Paper requires only sunlight or the power of a single light bulb to be read and used; computers require a continuous stream of electricity generated predominantly by non-renewable fossil fuel energy sources. In 2006, for example, Internet data servers alone purchased twice the amount of energy purchased by the U.S. pulp and paper industry.

The post NAPL: Toshiba ‘No-Print Day’ Campaign Points Wrongful Finger at Print first appeared on The Paper Story (PAMSA).

On this day Toshiba proposes to ‘raise awareness of the impact printing has on our planet’ and of ‘the role of paper in the workplace’, They are asking people and companies not to print or copy anything that day. This campaign is backed up by a number of contentious and unsourced claims designed to support this ill-conceived initiative.

There are many flaws surrounding Toshiba’s campaign including:

 • Toshiba seems to have ignored the environmental impact of electronic communications. Just saying you are eliminating print and paper really does not mean you are necessarily helping the planet. It’s a lot more complex than that. If the alternative is, for example, electronic communication, then what is the environmental impact of this? Greenpeace have identified electronic waste as the fastest growing component of the municipal waste steam. (1)
• Toshiba has linked paper use to deforestation (or killing trees and destroying forests) when, in fact, responsibly made paper can be a sustainable way to communicate. Paper is a highly recycled commodity in Europe, with a recycling rate approaching 70 per cent. (2) Does Toshiba recycle its products so effectively? We think not.
• Paper is based on wood, a natural and renewable material. Electronic equipment, ink and toner cartridges, including those with the Toshiba brand, are made mostly from non-renewable resources and are not so easily recycled. Has Toshiba considered the life cycle of all of its own products before professing expertise on others?
• What do the thousands of men and women employed by Toshiba to manufacture, sell and distribute copiers, printers and toner cartridges world-wide think about this campaign?

Two Sides openly challenges Toshiba’s claims and would like to understand if Toshiba have taken into account verifiable and accurate environmental facts about print and paper in a multi-media world.

Before withdrawing this flawed campaign Toshiba should consider the plethora of accredited facts on the Two Sides Website: www.twosides.info including:
• Since 1950 Forests in Western Europe have increased by 30 per cent. (3)
• European forests are increasing by 1.5 million football pitches every year – an area four times the size of London. (4)

Two Sides promotes print and paper as a versatile, sustainable communications medium. We do not usually comment on the comparative environmental performance of other industries but we cannot let this unwarranted attack on our industry go unanswered.

We look forward to Toshiba’s response.

(1)Greenpeace, The E-waste Problem 2009
(2) The European Declaration on Paper Recycling 2006 – 2010 Monitoring Report 2010
(3) UNECE, FAO, The Development of Forest Resources, 1950 to 2000
(4) CEPI, Forest Fact Sheet, July 2008

Two Sides is a worldwide initiative by companies from the Graphic Communication Value Chain including forestry, pulp, paper, inks and chemicals, pre-press, press, finishing, publishing and printing. Our common goal is to promote the responsible production and use of print and paper, and dispel common environmental misconceptions by providing users with verifiable information on why print and paper is an attractive, practical and sustainable communications medium.

Visit: www.twosides.info to learn lots more.

Source:  http://www.graphicrepro.co.za/asp/news_long.asp?nid=20041

The post Two Sides challenges Toshiba’s ‘No Print Day’ as Greenwash first appeared on The Paper Story (PAMSA).