Counterintuitive

Always have liked that word.  Something that is counterintuitive is unexpected, surprising. Counterintuitive results may even seem illogical at first.  A counterintuitive conclusion calls out for examination.

Where exactly is this leading? To something relevant, of course. International Paper Company has sponsored a new website based upon a seemingly counterintuitive argument.  The website is GoPaperGrowTrees.com and the argument goes something like this: choosing and using paper actually benefits forests and the environment.

Poor Richard can hear what may of you are thinking . . . “sheer propaganda from wealthy timber barons bent on despoiling America’s valuable natural resources.”

Admittedly, the source of the argument lends a certain tinge to it’s credibility. Poor Richard, having earned his livelihood (for better and lately for worse) in and around the timber and paper industry, may also be considered a suspicious source.  Yet the argument stands on its own, despite the advocates involved.  It’s born of simple economics and goes something like this:

1. Forestry is an agricultural business.  This is certainly true in the US and the website supplies the data to prove it.
2. The amount of a product supplied is directly related to the demand for that product. This is basic economics. Remember the S&D graph in Econ 101?  The price of the product is determined by the intersection of the supply and demand curves.
3. There is competition for the resources needed for production.  In this case, the competing interest is development.  Most of the timberland lost in the US during the last 20 years was forestland that was eliminated for development. The value of the land resource was greater when developed for commercial or residential use than when employed in agricultural production of timber.
4. If the demand for forest related products (specifically paper) remains low, prices will not provide an incentive for continued forest management, additional forest lands will be lost, and fewer remaining forests will be managed either for environmental or agricultural benefit.
5. Finally (and conversely), an increase in the demand for (and price of) print and paper will preserve forest lands and help to insure the best economic and environmental outcomes.

Multiple factors have driven the decrease in the demand for paper and print during the last 3 years.  Foremost among these are the availability of competing technologies (like blogs on the internet), the perception that the cost of print outweighs any benefit it has over competing forms of communication, and the propensity to simply cut the larger identifiable costs when under economic stress.

It would be interesting to be able to measure the actual effect that environmental objections have had on demand.  While Poor Richard suspects that this would be difficult to quantify, there is no doubt that the green objection has made a great excuse for the denigration of print and the diminution of demand for print on paper.  (I still don’t believe that people are really freaking out about printing their emails).

Will this signal a return to the good old days of print on paper? Probably not, but it’s still a very effective (if counterintuitive) argument for valuable products that really shouldn’t be as outmoded as popular environmental mantras would make them.   Click on the logo, visit the site, watch the video and let me know what you think. Or better yet, order something printed on paper from the printshop behind the red awnings on Poplar Street.

Just how green can you get?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against environmentalism. Poor Richard is just as worried about what we’ve done to the planet as the rest of you. And I’m really concerned when it’s 40 degrees on January 1st and 75 on the 2nd. But I think we’re taking the “green movement” a little too far. Right now, I’m remembering the lyrics to an old B.B. King blues song:

I gave you a brand new Ford
and you said “i want a Cadillac”
I bought you a ten dollar dinner
and you said “thanks for the snack”!
I let you live in my penthouse
you said it was just a shack!
I gave you seven children
and now you wanna to give ’em back!

In “How Blue Can you Get?,” B.B. has gone to the extremes for his woman . . . but nothing he can do is good enough for her. ‘Scuse me, but I think we’re taking the environmental thing just a little too far, too. I discovered a new font on the web the other day. It’s called Spranq Eco Sans. Here’s an example:

Spranq Eco Sans

You will note that the font has holes in it . . . small holes that can’t be seen when the type is small (below the blue line); but are visible in the large type.  Created by a (very clever) Dutch advertising agency, Spranq, the Eco Sans font is purported to use up to 20% less ink.  I’m not really sure how serious Spranq’s initiative was intended to be, but here’s what they say:

The Ecofont is developed by SPRANQ, based on a hunch of Colin Willems.

With the Ecofont SPRANQ hopes to increase environmental awareness. Some ideas are:
• End-users: print only when necessary, use a modern, efficient printer and use unbleached paper.
• Graphic designers: use modern color separation techniques to avoid unnecessary wastage in ink. In paper choice, take the environment into account.
• (Offset) printers: avoid modern laser techniques that make ink indivisible from the paper. Keep an eye on innovations, such as plant-based ink.
• Printer manufacturers: invest in environment-conscious innovation.

Poor Richard is convinced that the Eco font is fulfilling its purpose.  It’s getting Spranq a lot of attention. As to the company’s stated intent, I can’t resist a barely guarded response:

1. Print only when necessary.  Also, you should only use a bare minimum of toilet paper . . . only as much as is necessary. Staples and Office Depot don’t carry much in the way of unbleached paper, but AlphaGraphics can cut some kraft paper down for you if you would like to run it through your laser printers (or use it in your bathroom).
2. Graphic designers, does this mean that you can’t use 300% saturation for blacks any more (C=70, M=70,Y=60,K=100)? More about paper in following paragraphs.
3. Offset printers aren’t concerned with laser technologies, but there are no laser/toner/inkjet technologies that do not make the ink indivisible from the paper. Soy based inks don’t dry very well. Also, the dot gain is excessive . . . rendering the holes in the Eco Sans font completely useless.
4. Printer manufacturers — I’ll leave this one alone. I’d rather talk about the paper manufacturers.

For some time, AlphaGraphics, Inc. has been championing a chain of custody initiative. It’s called FSC (Forest Stewardship Council).  FSC is involved in the certification of timberlands worldwide for best management practices. All well and good. In the U.S., their stated goal is:

to coordinate the development of forest management standards throughout the different biogeographic regions of the U.S., to provide public information about certification and FSC, and to work with certification organizations to promote FSC certification in the U.S.  (Source: fscus.org).

Laudable goals. Great marketing. But completely unnecessary in the U.S. For 15 years prior to diving in to a small printing business, Poor Richard was employed in the lumber industry. At one time Poor Richard was actually a board member for the  Southern Forest Products Association. From this viewpoint, I can state without reservation that the U.S. timber industry is not the problem.

In 1994, the American Forest and Paper Association started a Sustainable Forestry Initiative setting Best Management Practices and goals  for American forests:

a set of forestry principles that would meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. These principles call for a land stewardship ethic which integrates the reforestation, nurturing, and harvesting of trees for useful products with the conservation of soil, air and water resources, wildlife and fish habitat, and forest aesthetics.

Weyerhaeuser Corporation, now defunct, was involved in sustainable forest initiatives decades before the SFI.  I will never forget a visit to Mt. Saint Helens in the early 1990s, about 10 years after the eruption. Weyerhaeuser owned most of the timberlands approaching the mountain. They had replanted almost all of the timber that was destroyed by the volcano.  They managed the timber they owned in South Georgia in much the same way, as did Union Camp and many other timber companies and private landowners.

Here’s the point:  We need to get real about our environmental concerns and about what we actually do (not just what we say we do).

On the AF&PA website, I found the following:

Nevertheless, despite its collective strengths, the industry is under intense cost pressure from foreign competitors. Many foreign competitors are not incurring government regulatory program costs comparable to those in the United States. The industry continues to look for the most efficient and cost-effective ways to improve environmental performance. This means that we will continue to press for regulatory approaches that are cost effective, performance-based and take business cycles into account.

Let’s take this to the microcosm — a small printshop in Macon, GA. AlphaGraphics buys FSC and SFI certified papers. We buy from American mills as much as possible. Most of the remaining  American made papers do  have some recycled content. We can and do buy a recycled gloss paper from Appleton Papers called Utopia.

But, we also buy an inexpensive gloss text that is imported by our distributors. Some of it comes from China. Why do we buy this stuff? Because we have to. Paper is a significant cost component in most printed products (duh?). Without an economically priced paper option, we would not be able to sell color printing. The FSC certification sound great and it’s a great marketing tool . . . but it doesn’t apply in China. The fiber in this stuff may come from waste paper imported from the U.S. or from the rain forests of Myanmar (Burma). Who knows?

It wasn’t always this way.  In days of yore, before the U.S. abdicated our manufacturing crown (regulated and free traded it away), it was possible to buy a variety of domestic papers:  in different colors, in different grades, at different price points. Now, many of the remaining U.S. mills are owned by overseas companies and the selection has been reduced to “white ” or “natural” (see Poor Richard’s post “If Counterfeiters are dinosaurs, can printers be far behind?”).

I’m banging the drum again. What the AF&PA advocates is practical, not idealistic. It’s time we get beyond the nonsense of “green” marketing and get back to the critical issue of how we control our own destiny. Selling green is meaningless. Doing green is not.  Doing green and competing is even better.

We’ve got our priorities wrong. Like B.B.’s ungrateful lover, we’re dissatisfied with what we don’t have and didn’t earn. Perhaps we also want to regulate the impractical.  The U.S. did very well with Fords and ten dollar dinners. We still can. It’s time to make the most of what we have. We have done it responsibly before . We can manufacture things responsibly again. It’s time to get back to work.

Here’s B.B. King, for your listening pleasure:

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “BB King — “How Blue Can You Get”“, posted with vodpod

If counterfeiters are dinosaurs, can printers be far behind?

It was called “Old Money” for a good reason. Crane Papers of Massachusetts made it, the very same company that made currency stock for the U.S. Treasury for all those years. I had heard all of the stories about printers and counterfeiting, but I guess it never really registered. That was before the order for letterhead printed on “Old Money” came in.

We ordered the stock through Unisource, our primary vendor at the time. The order was for 5000 sheets, so I think we ordered 5500 sheets to account for waste. I liked the stock when it came in . . . it really did have the look and feel of old money. High rag content, kind of soft feeling and a very light green tint when you looked at it in sunlight. Cool, I thought, then went on to the next thing.

It was a couple of days later when I picked up the phone. It was a young lady from Crane who wanted to speak with the owner. “You’re not in our records,” began the conversation.

“That’s good?” I responded.

“Not necessarily,” was the reply. “I’m calling about the paper.”

“Ahh, the paper . . .” I answered, still without the foggiest notion of who she was or where this conversation was heading. “What paper?”

“Old Money,” retorted the young lady, and it all came together for me.

AlphaGraphics Macon was not in her database. We had purchased a product that looked suspiciously like real money, and she needed to know where it went. I played along, giving her information about our customer, the quantity delivered and what we had left. I comforted her with the assurance that we were indeed a real printing company and not a concern for either Crane Papers or the U.S. Treasury Department.

As far as I can tell, “Old Money” has gone the way of most of the interesting papers of the last century. Henry Ford would approve of today’s approach to paper selection. The customer can have anything they want, as long as it’s white or tan. As demand for paper has declined, the paper industry has consolidated, and much of the really interesting paper we used to be able to get is no longer available.

As of last week, there were basically two large manufacturers left. Domtar and Sappi seem to have gobbled up all of the rest of the big companies. We still are able to buy our old standby sheet, Cougar Opaque, which used to be made by Weyerhaueser, which was purchased by International Paper, which was swallowed by Domtar. You get the picture. There are two remaining US fine paper mills, Neenah and Mohawk, that still offer a pretty wide selection of flavors . . . but none of the paper distributors keep them in stock. Crane is actually still around. They make very nice and expensive writing paper that can be obtained in white or tan and they still produce the currency paper for the U.S. mint.

Why am I writing this? I miss the variety. Designers used to love to choose a fancy paper to make their project special. Their goal was to create an economical, but elegant printed piece, using one or two colors of ink on an unusual paper and sometimes with an unusual shape. One of our favorite designers, who moved to Japan and then to Ohio, but who was not swallowed up in large company mergers; used to do amazingly creative things with paper and ink. They were fun to print.

Designers have moved to the web and paper has become boring. The paper manufacturers tried to console us for a while by making up new names for white and tan. “Ecru” sounds kind of designey. “Natural white” is down to earth. “Cream” is kind of comforting. “Soft ivory” doesn’t do much for me, because I don’t like the idea of hunting elephants. And when you put all of these sheets beside one another, they’re all tan. “Glacier” is whiter than tan, but not nearly as white as “Solar” or “Avalanche.” You understand.

Printers have coped by printing a lot more in color. The technology for short run color has become more accessible and prices for offset have come way down with the onset of automation and with increased competition. Sometimes we even print a background to simulate the interesting paper we used to be able to purchase.

I never printed on “Old Money” again and I don’t suppose Crane needs to keep a database of printers who buy their papers anymore. You don’t read much about counterfeiting any more. Like fine papers, it may have become a thing of the past. Why would any self-respecting criminal would bother with messy, labor intensive crime like forgery or counterfeiting when easier, neater high-tech crimes like identity theft are so readily available?

A customer will still occasionally ask to come in and look at paper. They’re remembering swatch books with dozens of shades and textures from which to choose. Some are incredulous when I explain the limited availability. But the runs are short and usually a deadline is looming, so ordering in carton quantities from the mill is rarely an option. I’m tired of white and tan, too; but fine papers are quickly going the way of the dinosaur. And honestly, I’m feeling a little fossilized myself.