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Two Sides North America launches new campaign on paper sustainability

Two Sides North America has launched Love Paper, a new campaign designed to raise consumer awareness of the sustainable characteristics of print, paper and paper-based packaging.

The centrepiece of the campaign is a consumer-friendly website, lovepaperna.org, which reveals facts about how print and paper products contribute to a sustainable future.

“As consumers become increasingly concerned about the environmental impacts of the publications they read, the products they buy and the packaging those products come in, they need factual, science-based information to make informed purchasing decisions,” says Phil Riebel, Two Sides North America president, in a statement.

“But all too often, they have little more than unsubstantiated marketing claims like ‘go green, go paperless’ or ‘going paperless saves trees’ to guide them. We created the Love Paper campaign to make it easy for anyone to get verifiable facts about the sustainability of print and paper products from a wide variety of trusted sources.”

Consumers underestimate sustainability

Print and paper products are an important part of a circular economy where resources are used as productively and efficiently as possible.

They are made with renewable raw materials, are recyclable and in North America are manufactured using mostly renewable, carbon-neutral energy, making them an environmentally sound choice for reading materials, communications and packaging solutions.

Many North American consumers significantly underestimate how sustainable print and paper products truly are.

For example, in Canada, only 21 per cent of consumers think the recycling rate for paper and paper-based packaging exceeds 60 per cent. In reality, the Canadian recycling rate is among the highest in the world at 70 per cent, according to the Forest Products Association of Canada.

A 2019 survey commissioned by Two Sides found that 58 per cent of consumers believe U.S. forests are shrinking.

In fact, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates these forests, which supply the fresh wood fibre used by the U.S. pulp and paper industry, grew by a net area equivalent to more than 1,600 NFL football fields per day between 1990 and 2015.

“Our surveys also show that 68 per cent of U.S. consumers believe print is the most enjoyable way to read books and 65 per cent prefer reading printed magazines, with Canadian consumer preferences closely matching those of Americans,” Riebel says.

“On the packaging side, our data also show that more than half of U.S. consumers surveyed are actively taking steps to reduce their use of plastic packaging as evidence of harm caused by plastic litter in the oceans continues to grow. The Love Paper campaign provides credible, fact-based information on why print and paper products are an environmentally responsible choice.”

Industry support

A key element of the Love Paper campaign is a series of print ads that promote the sustainability of print and paper.

The ads, which focus on the sustainable forestry, recycling and renewable energy advantages of paper, are available to newspaper and magazine publishers free of charge.

The full-colour ads are available on the campaign website in full-page, half-page (horizontal and vertical) and quarter-page sizes.