Smock Paper: Eco Nonsense From Across The World
Posted by keith on December 9th, 2008
A little tardy with this one: a reader alerted me to an article on Treehugger back in August, which straight away gained some splendidly cynical comments about greenwashing. The article in question is essentially an advert for a luxury paper by a company called Smockpaper:
Smock Paper is the first company in the US to offer “printing on luxury bamboo paper.” For those of you hosting a party, getting married or just looking for something different to write home to mom on, Smock Paper offers an alternative paper made on fast-growing and pesticide free bamboo. Smock offers a product that harks back to an earlier era when artisans took care, time and attention to detail to make a good product. While the paper is made in a european mill, the paper is printed and pressed in their workshop in Syracuse, NY and this is where the magic happens.
Now, producing a fancy wedding invitation is not quite in the realms of the supernatural, so I would first suggest that the term “magic” is a little excessive; what is even more excessive is the suggestion that this paper is “green”. The little picture above, crafted to “magically” bring out the texture of a bamboo plantation overlain by a map of the world has three red dots: those are the stopping off points for this product which makes its way across the world from bamboo plantation in Thailand, paper mill in Europe (no details of country, except the mill is “500 years old”, because that makes all the difference — see http://smockpaper.com/sustain/bamboo/) and printing press in New York — a trip of at least 14,000 miles!
This is not green.
The response given by the parent company, Boxcar Press, tries to justify the extravagence by talking about various efforts such as envrionmental donations (1% of earnings, wow!) and organic vegetables for staff, but the real give away is this statement:
“The nature of our paper requires us to transport our product around the globe, but we primarily use sea freight (low carbon emissions per pound), and we are doing whatever we can to reduce our energy usage and our carbon emissions from our wind-powered print shop.”
So, you are claiming your product is environmentally friendly, yet because it is “environmentally friendly” you have to transport it around the world, making a complete mockery of your claims!
I think I’ll stick to recycled paper, and not get too excited about having luxury wedding invitations, if that’s all right with you.