During the fourth quarter of 2010, InfoTrends and the North American Publishing Company (NAPCO) conducted a Web-based questionnaire with print providers regarding their opinions on print revenue/volume trends, paper grades, runnability issues, and paper attributes. Due to the growing importance of environmental sustainability, some of the questions were directly related to “green” initiatives.
The respondents indicated that 35% of its paper consumption is recycled. In-plants have a higher consumption of recycled paper compared to print-for-pay respondents. The higher percentage for in-plants may be due to corporate policies mandating a certain percentage of paper products be recycled material.
About 68% of respondents felt that certain vertical segments are more committed than others to using recycled content. Pricing seems to be a barrier for increased use of recycled content by customers. Around 57% indicated that their customers are unwilling to pay more for recycled paper compared to 22% who believe their customers would.
There is a belief that larger companies, in an effort to minimize their environmental footprint, are more committed to using recycled content. This belief holds true among the survey respondents with nearly half agreeing that this is the case. Nevertheless, there remains some ambivalence about the use of recycled content for personal use by customers. Close to 38% of respondents were unsure about customers’ preference to use recycled paper for their own use than for print jobs.
It is very evident that as the environment movement continues, more people will be using recycled papers.