In my column last week, our survey asked, "Do you favor putting "energy consumption to produce" information on pulp and paper products?"
75 percent replied "Yes," while 25 percent said "No."
Then we asked for other comments on the subject.
Here are the responses:
It would be too easy for those figures to get distorted by those with an agenda to hurt the industry. (How much energy is used in plastic packaging?) Besides, not all energy is created equally, with most at a virgin mill being biomass, with some non-renewable, but recycle board would likely be all utility power.
For kraft mills that also burn wood waste and produce and sell more power than they consume and sell it on the grid, it would probably seem we are not telling the truth. Guess that would be a hard story to tell on a package label.
It has to be simple and defensible. kWh/unit paper should always be stated. One approach to ease consumer understanding it to also use the(more-or-less standardised "Consumption of the average house" as a unit. Of course that is a lot relative to a ream of paper. I like your "iPhone for a year units" I suspect it will be in the order of 5kWh/year for the phone alone, so in the same order as 500 sheets paper (the public does not understand "ream" NCASI is good at working out such numbers, if the committee responsible can be persuaded to keep it simple.
No quiz this week.
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