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The Conference of Western Attorneys General is pleased to host GreenWorksGov, a blog devoted to helping public organizations to green their internal business practices. GreenWorksGov offers practical steps to a successful start-up, topical news and information, and resources to save you time and money. Your comments are important to us. Please join the conversation and share your experiences and recommendations.
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Getting Smart About PaperMay 22, 2013In an earlier blog, I wrote about the Environmental Paper Network (EPN) and the many wonderful resources it offers to help offices tackle the issues of reducing paper consumption and buying recycled content paper. The EPN is my “go to” site for news and information. When I need to bring home a point about paper, I don’t have to look far to get attention-grabbing items like this one from EPN’s “20ll State of the Paper Industry” report:
“If United States offices reduced virgin fiber copy paper use by 10% from 2009 levels, it would save 22.8 million trees, reduce greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to taking 481,000 cars off the road, and keep over 60,000 trucks full of solid waste out of landfills and incinerators.”
I visit the EPN website regularly because it has great content that I can use to raise awareness about paper production and usage and to help purchasing agents make more informed choices about paper options. The paper calculator is a tool I’ve used a number of times to compare different papers and to demonstrate the environmental benefits of buying recycled content paper. The EPA has a link to the calculator, too, from its website.
The EPN has a Complete Paper Toolkit that includes paper purchasing guidelines. The guidelines are a “how to” from beginning to end including how to gauge your baseline, set goals, establish a policy, buy environmentally preferable paper, track progress, and share results. Another resource link is a Q and A Fact Sheet on the environmental benefits of recycled paper. It answers most of the questions people have about the environmental effects of the commercial logging of forests and the manufacturing of pulp into paper. Access to the reports and fact sheets are free; the EPN has a short registration form to complete and that’s all there is to it.
The EPN is an international alliance of more than 100 organizations that share a common vision of transforming the paper industry. In short, the EPN alliance seeks to minimize the excessive and unnecessary consumption of paper, maximize the pre- and post-consumer recycled content of paper, improve virgin paper sourcing, and work toward cleaner pulp and paper production. They are making progress! The average North American consumed 154 lbs. less paper in 2009 than in 2005. Learn more here. Read more. 
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