The Stationers Guild

I just received a message from a rather prominent publishing company stating that they had decided to “go green” and I was asked to sign-up to receive email invoices.   By signing up, I was told that I would help save a tree.  Honestly, are companies that promote this disingenuous hype credible?    As my environmentalist friend counsels, “If you see any environmental claim, simply follow the money trail.  The ‘green’ claims of big business are generally bogus.”

Let’s look at the facts:

• The reason why XYZ Publishing Company would like to send “electronic” invoices is to save paper and postage.
• Will a tree be saved?  Highly unlikely.  I will need to print out an invoice to keep a paper trail.  In effect, the vendor has effectively passed on his invoicing costs to me.
• Regardless of who prints the invoices, will a tree be cut down?   Maybe, but doubtful.  So much of today’s business paper is recycled and, in any event, most companies source paper from environmentally certified forests.  Would it surprise you to learn that we have more trees in the US today than we did 100 years ago.
• If the leadership of this publishing company were really concerned that their invoicing policies were truly harmful to the environment, wouldn’t they shift all book publishing to electronic distribution channels?

Let’s face it.  These environmental benefits are totally bogus and true leaders should simply step out and say they are recommending changing their invoicing practices to save money.  Don’t use the environment to justify cost-cutting.  You discredit the environmental movement and simply look stupid.  In fact, I am not sure you are even a credible partner.

Richard W. May
Therese Saint Clair

In a recent article that was picked up by Planet Green, Cara Smusiak cites the advantages of setting up an online RSVP for your wedding invitations.  With little real evidence to support her claim, Ms. Smusiak argues that “Wedding invitations add up to a giant carbon footprint. Between invitation delivery and RSVP responses, there’s a lot of transportation and mechanical sorting involved—all of which requires energy, which is probably supplied by an unclean energy source.”

At the risk of being ostracized by the green community, I do think Ms. Smusiak’s claim is exaggerated and her advice may, in fact, cause more harm to the environment than sending out wedding invitations.  For instance, the Gartner Group and HP report that the average web user uses 28 pages of paper daily.   In fact, 115 billion sheets of paper are used annually for personal computers:  more than 3 times the volume of first class letters (non-sorted) in the United States.   I guess the question is:  Are we really any better off collectively if  the emailed recipient is simply printing the invitation and direction card at his or her work station?  I don’t know the answer, but I suspect that it is probably a wash.

While I am all for helping the environment, I would like to do so responsibly.  There are many talented invitation designers such as Oblation and Julie Holcomb who have been promoting green papers and eco-friendly printing solutions long before “eco-chic” and green weddings became fashionable.  While we may feel better touting questionable green claims, the movement would be far better served by addressing more serious problems than pretending that wedding invitations are destroying the environment.  ”Green wedding invitations“ sounds cool, but I suspect that it is just simply an ill-considered urban legend that continues to gather momentum without the benefit of much thought, let alone serious debate.

Environmentalists like Scot Case of Terrachoice, regularly point out the sins of “greenwash” and how exaggerated and deceptive claims undermine the environmental cause.    Beating the drum for this particular “cause” is guilty of the sins of irrelevance and lack of proof.

This week I attended a conference at the Javits Center National Gift Show entitled “Get Real . . . Green Verification and Certification.”  Like most responsible people (although my wife might disagree), I wish to use our planet’s resources wisely.  I had hoped that behaving “green” was as simple as plugging in a purchasing decision or behavior pattern into a carbon footprint calculator and voila:  pat yourself on the back for doing the right thing!  Little did I know how mistaken I was.

The Javits Center conference showed how difficult it is to verify “green” claims.  Three speakers from quite different backgrounds, but equally committed to the environment, shared their insights on how one might go about green verification and some of the pitfalls in this process.  I have broken down the Blog into three parts to summarize each speaker’s presentation and keep the article to manageable proportions.

Alan Honick, a documentary filmaker most of his life, traced the complexities of environmental sustainability by discussing his research on the controversy over the Northern Spotted Owl and logging in the northwest.  Clearly, there is far more to the subject than simply an endangered species.  He argues that all factors – including human – need to be taken into consideration when looking at environmental issues.  I had a chance to talk to Alan after the conference and he pointed me to the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) for more information on this important subject.  He believes that the FSC does an excellent job in keeping the “human economy” in sync with natural ecology.  See Mr. Horick’s fascinating 10-part video in 9 minute segments entitled “Critical Habitat”:

Despite the somber tone of this excellent video, it captures the complexities of tinkering with mother nature and the difficulties in developing sustainability models that balance environmental, economic and social needs.  Out of countless interviews with advocacy groups and scientists, Mr. Honick featured 18 special-interest advocates and 15 scientists in the video to provide a balanced presentation of the issues involved.  I was most fascinated with the role of millipede which is responsible for processing 95% of the organic matter in the forest.  As Mr. Honick correctly points out, the Northern Spotted Owl was just a side-show for a very complex problem.