Tree story

[Lane]

So I was at a store earlier because I needed a 500-pack of paper to draw on. I noticed that the regular paper was 5.99 and the 30% recycled paper was 7.99.

This first thing that popped in my head was that 'someone' was profiting on the fact that people might want to buy recycled paper. Shouldn't recycled paper be CHEAPER? I don't know all the manufacturing techniques but I just figure that it costs more to turn a tree into a piece of paper than it does to recycle old paper into a new batch.

Isn't that the point?

Or is the point just a..... profit margin?

 

I don't really know anymore.

 

I should probably just make my own paper scraps to draw on.

I think I saw a how-to zine on that somewhere :)

 

[Lane]

Yeah, this green washing stuff is for the birds. They did it with hybrids afterall. The tech was there in the 80's but not the profit. Now they're telling us it's 'evil' for anyone to drive a gas powered car.

[Brittany Dalberg]

It's true! It's called "green washing" the consumer. More and more people want to be green, so the businesses see it as a way to make an extra buck. And in turn we'll pay more because of their "green" label; whether or not it is actually environmentally friendly is another story. 

[Ms Valerie Park Distro]

I think it's largely because of corporate interest and gov't subsidies that makes most any recycled product more expensive. The same goes for organic...on most fronts. (The regulations for what qualifies as organic has been loosened considerably and now allow huge frozen food companies to be organic and such). Companies that make recycled products are often smaller, too, which means they aren't buying in as large of quantities, which makes it more expensive, and aren't selling in as large of quantities, so they're counting on a higher profit margin per unit than a company that can sell millions of a non-recycled product that they're only making a dime on per unit.