Green Graphic Design
By Brian Dougherty

The following excerpt from Brian Dougherty’s soon-to-be released book, Green Graphic Design , gives just a taste of the many flavorful morsels you’ll find throughout the contents. Our first installment deals with the outer layer of Dougherty’s “design avocado.” Our upcoming selection in November will go straight to the avocado seed. – PS

There are three different ways of thinking about a graphic designer’s role: designer as manipulator of stuff, designer as message maker and designer as agent of change.

I like to think of design as a big ripe avocado. The outer layer of this avocado represents the physical world of paper and print. This is the obvious part of design that we immediately see – the layer of stuff. Yet if we peel back the skin of the avocado, we discover the meat. This is the realm of brand and information. All of that stuff on the exterior really exists in order to convey information and deliver messages.

If we dive still deeper into the design avocado, we find one more layer – the seed at the center. This seed represents the central challenge around which all of the messages and stuff of design revolve: affecting change.

Fiber + Water + Energy = Paper

Designers who try to understand the ecological impact of the paper they use must confront a flurry of competing logos and marketing claims from paper companies. Each company promotes a range of single-attribute advantages for their products, making it difficult to compare competing products.

If we understand the multiple environmental issues facing the industry, then it’s easier to separate substance from fluff. We can divide those issues into three basic categories: fiber issues, water issues and energy issues.

Fiber Issues

We may think that we are in the business of fonts and images, but our fiber consumption also makes graphic designers major players in the forest products industry. As such, our choices impact deforestation, species extinction global warming, and other global environmental issues.

Designers can do three things to minimize the negative impacts of the fiber we use:

• use postconsumer recycled fiber,
• use sustainably harvested virgin fiber and
• use tree-free alternative fibers.

Postconsumer recycled fiber (PCR) fiber comes from collection programs, not from the forest. When we use it, we are not putting pressure on forest ecosystems. We are also supporting paper collection programs by providing a market for collected fiber. Both of these are ecological positives.

High-quality papers with up to 100 percent postconsumer recycled fiber are readily available for uncoated offset printing. Because of increased public demand over the past two decades, high-quality PCR paper is increasingly available for coated sheets and web presses. A growing number of magazines and catalog retailers are using these sheets.

Sustainably harvested fiber is virgin fiber that is produced through responsible forest management. “Responsible” is a vague and slippery term, so it is important to demand third-party certification.

The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) has emerged as the premier standard for assessing the sustainability of forest management practices. In order to use the FSC certification logo on their products, a forest products company must submit their activities for review by auditors. Another well-respected certification is the Ancient Forest Friendly program sponsored by Markets Initiative group.

Graphic designers can help accelerate the transition to sustainable forestry and protect the rare remaining ancients forests by demanding FSC certification or Ancient Forest Friendly certification of all the virgin fiber paper they use.

The next step for the paper industry is to go beyond conventional industrial agriculture to something akin to organic agriculture. FSC-certified forestry is far better than clear-cuts of ancient forests, but the standard still allows the maintenance of large-scale tree farms that support very little biodiversity.

Also, certifications are typically set up as “minimal” standards. They help establish certain practices in the mainstream, but they don’t necessarily drive innovation. The real market leaders are often performing well beyond the minimal standard and those are the companies we should try to support.

Alternative fibers are another way to avoid damaging forests through your paper purchases because they come from a fiber source other than trees. Trees are not an ideal source of fiber for paper: They take a long time to grow and are not particularly space efficient.

Bamboo is the alternative fiber that has gained the most traction in the North American paper market. It grows faster than wood, and it can be regrown from established roots without replanting. That helps to minimize topsoil loss. However, most bamboo comes from Asia and must be transported long distances – which requires significant amounts of energy.

Kenaf, hemp and flax are fast-growing crops that have been used for papermaking. Several kenaf and hemp products have made it to the market, but none has been a big success so far.

These and other dedicated crops hold the promise of shifting our fiber source to annually renewable crops that can grow with few pesticides in many climates.

Agricultural residue or agri-pulp, is perhaps the most promising fiber source because it makes use of the parts of an agricultural crop that are not used for food or another primary purpose. In this way, agri-pulp makes the most of a waste material that does not require dedicated agricultural land.

Sugar cane bagasse has made some inroads in the North American paper market. Several manufacturers incorporate bagasse into uncoated papers that are available to designers. Wheat straw, banana fiber, and rice straw are all being used in other parts of the world.

So far, though, no major North American paper manufacturer has made a big commitment to these promising fiber sources.

Cotton linters have been used for many years in high-end papers. Linters are the relatively short fibers left over after a cotton plant has been harvested and processed for textiles. Most paper marketed as “cotton” in North America is made with linters.

Manufacturers can classify this fiber as “recycled” because it makes use of agricultural waste. It’s worth nothing, however, that conventional cotton agriculture consumes enormous quantities of toxic pesticides and fertilizers. A few small paper companies have chosen to support organic growers and steer clear of highly polluting conventional cotton.

One final “fiber” source to consider is no fiber at all. Synthetic papers have been in development for specialty markets for well over a decade, and few producers are offering these for offset and web printing in North America.

William McDonough’s book, Cradle to Cradle, was printed on synthetic paper in order to make a point – that we should not limit ourselves to the dominant palette of materials if we can imagine a better system.

In theory, if there were a return and recycling infrastructure for this type of material, it could be remade and recirculated indefinitely. In practice, we’re not anywhere near that situation, but it definitely raises a good challenge for designers.

Water Issues

The huge paper making machines that create the paper we use start with a slurry mix of roughly 98 percent water. It is no surprise, then, that most mills are located on the banks of large rivers. The paper and pulp mills impact river ecosystems because of the quantity of water they use and because of the water quality of their effluent.

Designers can do three things to minimize the negative water impacts from the paper they use:

• use Process Chlorine Free and Totally Chlorine Free fiber
• support closed-loop pulp and paper mills, and
• use postconsumer recycled fiber (it requires a lot less water).

The paper industry’s water quality problems stem largely from chlorine-based chemicals used to bleach paper pulp. When chlorine combines with wood and water, it produces trace amounts of dioxin, a chemical that is extremely toxic, persists in the environment and bioaccumulates, meaning it stays in the food chain as contaminated plants and animals are eaten by other animals.

Since pulp mills use large quantities of river water and release effluent containing chlorine back into the rivers, they have had a devastating and long-lasting impact on the health of river ecosystems. This has left us all with a legacy of dioxin in our body fat and breast milk, which will persist for many generations to come.

Because of increased regulation and public pressure, the North American paper industry has largely eliminated chlorine gas in pulp mills. For the most part, North American pulp mills shifted to bleaching with chlorine derivatives like chlorine dioxide, which reduce chlorine emissions by 90 percent or more. The paper that results from this pulp is commonly labeled Elemental Chlorine Free (ECF).

European pulp mills, meanwhile, shifted primarily to more advanced systems based on oxygen or ozone, which eliminate chlorine altogether. The paper made with this bleaching technology is labeled Totally Chlorine Free (TCF) when applied to virgin fiber and Process Chlorine Free (PCF) when applied to recycled fiber.

ECF pulping is certainly better than chlorine-bleached pulp, which is still produced in large quantities in many developing countries, but TCF/PCF pulp is better.

In addition to the quality of water emissions, there are serious environmental impacts related to the quantity of water the paper industry uses. The pulp and paper industry is the number one industrial user of water worldwide.

Fresh water supply is rapidly becoming a worldwide environmental crisis on a similar scale to global warming. The paper industry is going to need to reduce its reliance on this precious resource, and graphic designers can help to speed the transition.

Innovative paper producers are moving toward “closed-loop” or Totally Effluent Free (TEF) manufacturing. Filtration technologies now exist that allow pulp and paper mills to continually reuse water.

As a result, TEF mills can drastically reduce the amount of fresh water they draw from rivers and wells, and the amount of wastewater they release into the environment. The water impact of paper manufacturing has not received much attention in the graphic design community yet, but it is likely to become a much bigger deal in coming years.

The easiest thing designers can do to reduce the water consumed for the paper they use is to specify postconsumer recycled fiber. It takes significantly less water to repulp existing paper than it does to create virgin pulp from trees. On average, PCR fiber needs 42 percent less water compared with virgin fiber.

Energy Issues

When we burn fossil fuels, we release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which contributes to the greenhouse effect that is radically shifting our climate on a global scale. The paper industry burns a lot of fossil fuels to break down the lignin that binds wood fiber together and then to rapidly transform watery slurry into dry paper.

Worldwide, the paper industry is an enormous emitter of greenhouse gases, rivaling the steel and chemical industries. That puts designers in a position to make a real difference by lowering our collective carbon footprint.

Designers can do two things to minimize the negative energy impacts from the paper they use:

• use postconsumer recycled fiber (it requires a lot less energy) and
• support renewable energy sources in papermaking.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that manufacturing postconsumer recycled paper requires 64 percent less energy than manufacturing paper from virgin fiber. That makes postconsumer recycled paper a triple positive, with benefits relating to fiber source, water usage and energy.

Copyright 2008 Brian Dougherty and Celery Design Collaborative. All Rights Reserved. This excerpt is reprinted with permission of the publisher. “Green Graphic Design” is published by Allworth Press and is scheduled to be released November 25, 2008. Pre-ordering is available at Amazon.com.