Are You Getting Enough (Post-Consumer) Fibre?
Everyone’s always ranting about the importance of fibre. If you’ve had St-Hubert delivered lately, you’re in the clear—you consumed 35% post-consumer fibre and you probably didn’t even taste the difference!
St-Hubert has made the switch from yellow to green! In December the company unveiled its new environmentally friendly packaging line made up entirely of recycled, recyclable, or compostable materials. Goodbye oxo-degradable Styrofoam; hello recycled cardboard! This means 412 tonnes less garbage to bury—not too shabby! Plus, with its playful, eye-catching design, the message is clear: recycling is for everyone!
But between you and me, it’s not always easy to make heads or tails of all these terms. Recycled, recyclable, biodegradable, compostable . . . I need a breather!
Recycled Paper and Post-consumer Fibres—The Lowdown
Recycled paper is made up of either post- or pre-consumer paper. In the first instance, the paper comes straight from our recycling bin, in other words, it has already been printed AND bought/sold. In the second instance, the paper is made up of leftover paper from factories or unsold magazines. To know whether or not paper is recycled, look for the famous Möbius strip logo. Most of the time, it has a circle around it—the version without the circle indicates that the material is recyclable. Watch out though, use of this logo is not closely monitored and the only condition to use it is a minimum of 1% recycled fibres.
But is there really a difference between recycled and non-recycled paper? Financially, you won’t notice much of a difference in your piggybank. Aesthetically, recycled paper is ever-so-slightly less white. Environmentally, however, is where we hit pay dirt: producing one tonne of 100% recycled paper (as opposed to new paper) saves 17 trees and 46,000 litres of water. Wowsers!
And if you want to be really green in your paper choice, at home or at work, opt for paper that is bleached without chlorine. Our recommendations to point you in the right direction: Cascades Enviro 100% postconsumer recycled fibre or Bureau en Gros 100% postconsumer recycled fibre.
Dust to Dust or the ABCs of Degradability
Degradable, oxo-degradable, biodegradable, and compostable—is there really a difference? In the end, all these materials will return to the earth more or less quickly. A disposable diaper, for instance, will take 500 years to degrade, whereas an apple core will only take a month. The diaper is just degradable, while the apple is compostable and therefore also degradable. You probably already guessed that the diaper is not compostable! Composting—very “in” these days—is a way to let organic matter (like table scraps) decompose and turn into humus. A couple of years ago, St-Hubert began its green shift by manufacturing oxo-degradable Styrofoam sauce containers. Material is made oxo-degradable by simply adding an additive to its composition that accelerates the degradation process. This way, once the container gets to the dump—in combination with the action of the heat—the container becomes biodegradable residue. Now, however, the famous sauce container is made of recycled (and recyclable) cardboard—and might just end up as a box in the next life!
March 9th, 2010 / 15:31
There are a few more facts readers need to understand this article and none of them make the environmental claims look better.
“Degradable” is a great example of a magic word that makes all around it appear virtuous. However, “degradable” products such as those referenced above that require destablizer additives don’t lead to biodegration.
Or, at least the manufacturers fail to prove it happens in 3rd party, scientifically accepted tests such as ATSM D6868 or ASTM D6400. The Biodegradable Products Institute, http://www.bpiworld.org, publishes a list of products that have been certified to biodegrade, as documented by independent, 3rd testing labs.
They also limit the secondary applications for recycled plastic to those that only need to survive for a few months as opposed to a longer-lasting secondary use like carpets.
The same is true for composters: millions of tiny flakes of plastic reduces the quality of each batch of finished compost mulch, driving down selling prices and economic sustainability.
The truth is that these quasi-degradables cause as many environmental problems as they claim to solve. They are best thought of as niche solutions that don’t make our world any greener.