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Campus-wide Purchasing
of Recycled Paper
Overview:
Purchasing recycled paper instead of non-recycled or virgin paper conserves resources, reduces pollution, and ensures the continued success of recycling collection programs. Current UC Berkeley recycled paper purchases are very limited, due mainly to a lack of information and priority on the part of office-supply purchasers. Increased availability of recycled paper, understanding of the importance and benefits of purchasing recycled paper, as well as education and outreach to purchasers would allow for increased substitution of post-consumer recycled paper for virgin paper.
Need:
Every year over a billion trees are cut down to provide raw materials for American paper and pulp mills. Substituting recycled materials into production saves resources, energy and water, as well as reducing air pollution and the need for disposal. Purchasing post-consumer recycled products establishes and stimulates the markets for recycled materials; the greater the demand for the recycled content products, the more manufacturers will purchase recycled stock and manufacture post-consumer recycled content products. History has shown us that the most vital component in successful recycling, is a secure, long term market for the materials we want to recycle. Insuring that the recycled content products that you buy have post-consumer content (materials that have been used by consumers or businesses and would have otherwise been sent to landfills or incinerators) is very important. It has been found that for every ton of post-consumer recycled paper: we save 17 trees, 4,100 kwh of energy, 7,000 gallons of water, and 3 cubic yards of landfill space, as well as keeping 60 pounds of effluents out of the air and reducing water pollution by 35%.
When recycled paper was first being produced, it was inferior in quality and much more expensive than virgin paper. As the market has matured, recycled paper can now be obtained that looks and performs exactly like non-recycled paper. Hundreds of brands are available with varied amounts of post-consumer content and some are very competitively priced with virgin paper. Conservatree, a non-profit based in San Francisco, hosts a website
http://www.conservatree.org that provides extensive resources on recycled paper characteristics, brands available, and manufacturer contact information.
In speaking to many UC Berkeley department or division office-supply purchasers recently, it was found that the majority do not currently purchase recycled paper. There are several apparent reasons for this. First, Office Depot, who holds a contract with Campus Supply, which most departments use as their primary office supplier, carries only a couple of brands of recycled paper at high prices. Many purchasers are also reticent to try recycled paper because they are still under the impression that it is inferior in quality or they do not realize the importance and environmental benefits of purchasing recycled paper. Furthermore, because the departments purchase paper individually, they are not as able to reap the benefits of volume pricing.
Many other colleges and universities throughout the nation are already purchasing recycled paper on a large-scale. Prime examples from the UC system are UC Davis and UC San Diego. UC San Diego passed a Waste Prevention and Recycling Policy in 1997 that requires the purchasing of post-consumer recycled paper by the Purchasing Department and individual departments. They also performed several performance tests on various recycled papers and found that copy paper supplied by the
Recycled Products Purchasing Cooperative performed the best and was available at highly competitive prices compared to virgin papers. UC Davis's storehouse is purchasing large enough amounts of the Eureka! brand recycled paper, with 30% post-consumer content, to make it less expensive than their virgin paper. The majority of Humboldt State University's writing and printing paper contains 30% post-consumer recycled content, amounting to approximately 19,000 reams of recycled paper purchased in the 1998-1999 fiscal year.
Federal Government agencies are required by Executive Order 13101 to purchase recycled paper according to the US EPA Comprehensive Procurement Guidelines (currently set at 30% post-consumer content for copy paper). California State agencies are also required to purchase recycled paper for 25% of the dollars that they spend on printing and writing papers. Numerous local government agencies also purchase recycled paper as directed by a recycled products procurement policy or on an informal basis. Furthermore, a piece of legislation, Resolution Chapter 97 (Attachment B4), was signed in 1990 by the California Governor stating that the University of California should give purchasing preference to recycled paper products.
The campus will soon begin to use recycled content janitorial supplies as well as worm castings produced from campus food waste. Both are examples of
"closed-loop" recycling. The purchase of recycled content paper will serve as another excellent example.
Implementation/Solution:
Recycled paper needs, first, to be more conveniently available to UC Berkeley department/division purchasers at more competitive prices. This can be accomplished in one of a couple of ways including: working on the Office Depot/Campus Supply contract to supply more brands at more reasonable prices, working with other recycled paper vendors so that departments purchase in cooperation to take advantage of volume pricing, and/or making individual department purchasing of recycled paper from outside competitively priced vendors just as convenient as purchasing from Office Depot.
A Recycled Products Purchasing Policy or a Chancellor, Vice Chancellor, or Division Manager directive would demonstrate to departmental purchasers, as well as the public, that UC Berkeley is committed to supporting the infrastructure of the recycling industry by purchasing post-consumer recycled paper. This is necessary to increase participation in recycled paper purchasing.
Finally, an education and outreach campaign to purchasers will help to dispel myths about recycled paper, convey the importance and environmental benefits, and inform them as to where the recycled paper is available. For this to be successful, contact information for the office supply purchasers is needed. Funding of approximately $2000 would cover the cost of production of outreach materials and mailing costs to department heads and/or AAs/MSOs. Labor for outreach could be supplied by Campus Recycling & Refuse Services, the ASUC and/or Campus Supply. A tracking system would be needed to determine baseline purchasing of recycled paper and to evaluate success of the implementation of the recycled products purchasing policy and outreach. A first-year goal of a 20% incremental increase in recycled paper purchased as compared to all copy paper purchased over the baseline could be set, as well as additional goals in the following years with periodic outreach.
Timeline:
Set guidelines for a "Buy Recycled" policy and develop purchasing infrastructure in Spring 2001. Set Summer 2002 as the goal for a 20% incremental increase in recycled paper purchases.
Prepared by Rachel Balsley, Recycling Operation Assistant and Cal Alumni
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