Archive for September, 2009
Paper Products that are Better, Cheaper and Greener
Posted on 08. Sep, 2009 by admin.
Marcal Small Steps paper towels are not only made entirely from recycled paper. They sell for less — in some instances quite a bit less — than paper towels made mostly from trees by the industry giants.
Here’s how the consumer’s choices look, measured from cheapest to most expensive, in terms of dollars per 100 paper towels:
• Marcal $1.64
• Bounty (Procter & Gamble) $1.79
• Giant (store brand) $1.85
• Brawny (Georgia-Pacific) 2.04, on sale
• Viva (Kimberly-Clark) $2.17
This is, of course, not the way things usually work. Solar power costs more than electricity made from coal. Organic food is pricier than conventional. You pay more for Starbucks’ coffee than you do for Dunkin’ Donuts. Partly that’s because the price consumers pay for conventional fare doesn’t reflect the full cost of the product. (See, for example, Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food, Bryan Walsh’s recent Time magazine cover story, about the hidden costs of industrial agriculture.)
marcal products
To say that I “discovered” Marcal isn’t precisely true. After I covered Greenpeace’s recent agreement with forest-products giants Kimberly-Clark, a PR woman asked me to look at the company. So I got on the phone with Tim Spring, Marcal’s CEO, who told me a little about Marcal and its history.
“This company was committed to saving trees for two decades before Greenpeace bought its first boat,” Spring said.
It turns out that Marcal, a 77-year-old maker of paper towels, napkins, toilet tissue and other consumer goods, has been using recycled stock since the 1950s. Based in suburban Elmwood Park, New Jersey, its paper-making factory employs about 900 people and draws much of its stock from those blue plastic recycling bins under office desks in Manhattan skyscrapers about 20 miles away.
Read entire article on GreenBiz.com
