Perspective: Kermit's Lament

Our recent spurt in production at BuildingGreen—new editions of

GreenSpec,

EBN Archives and

Green Building Advisor—has brought home a message that we often convey to others: being environmentally responsible can be a challenge.

Tackling any project, whether designing and building a structure or publishing a 368-page book, in a way that meets all of the functional and aesthetic requirements and considers the impact on our environment is a complex process that often involves tradeoffs and requires a lot of advance planning.

Take paper, for example. Although we’re moving more of our information resources online, we still use a lot of it. We insist on recycled paper and strive for the holy grail of green: paper made from 100% post-consumer waste and processed without chlorine. Unfortunately, there isn’t much demand for high-quality recycled-content paper, limiting the options in weights, colors, and styles. Distributors often don’t stock recycled paper, so it has to be ordered directly from the mill, with large minimum quantities and long lead times. And the price is typically higher (sometimes

a lot higher) than paper made from virgin fiber.

Then, just when you think you’ve found a suitable choice, you read a story about a company that has been making recycled paper for a decade while secretly (and illegally) dumping toxic process waste into a nearby trout steam at night—this really happened, though it wasn’t a company whose paper we used.

Then there’s packaging. After working for months on the

GreenSpec Directory and selecting the best recycled paper we could find within our budget, we opened the shipment of books to find that each book had been shrinkwrapped! It was no doubt a well-meaning gesture but not something we wanted.

It gets worse. After several e-mails, calls to the printer (and from them to their supplier), and a couple hours of research on the Web, we determined that the plastic wrap (a multilayer cross-linked polyolefin), while technically recyclable into composite plastic lumber, was not practicably recyclable because we don’t have

enough of it!

Finally, there are the CDs. Here’s an industry buried in plastic—think of all those polycarbonate discs and polystyrene jewel cases—but can you buy them made of recycled material? Not in this country in “small” quantities. It’s a similar story for the sleeves—no chance of a recycled-content plastic sleeve and precious few options for paper.

There is some good news. Ecological packaging is far more common (and often required) in Europe than in the U.S., and California and Wisconsin have limited regulations that require some plastic packaging to be made of recycled material and/or be recyclable. The global economy seems to be making product manufacturers increasingly aware of the benefit of meeting the most stringent eco-packaging requirements to allow an unfettered flow of their goods. But for now, from a publisher’s perspective I have to agree with Kermit . . . it’s not easy being green.

– Dan Woodbury