Paper production is a notoriously pollution-rich process. One of the most toxic and least necessary chemicals currently used is chlorine.  Paper mills use chlorine and chlorine gas to bleach pulp for brighter white paper products. One might make an argument for bright white printing paper, but really, do we need bright white toilet paper, napkins, and paper towels?  For that matter, how bright does printing paper really have to be?  Why do FedEx boxes and envelopes have to be bright white? Will they lose packages if they cannot see them in the dark?

Paper mills dump tons of dioxins - byproducts of the chlorine bleaching process - into American streams and rivers. Dioxins accumulate in fat cells, and have been implicated in higher cancer rates, as well as reproductive and developmental harm in both animals and humans. If paper mills only had to bleach a very few premium products, how much less dioxin would be released into the environment?

Better still, mills could use less environmentally damaging bleach agents, such as hydrogen peroxide, which produces byproducts of water and oxygen. The paper industry might need a little nudging. I think the most effective way to move paper mills from chlorine to less damaging chemicals is to build a viable market for unbleached products. That's why I've asked my partners and coworkers to switch to chlorine-free paper products.

Back in the late 80s and early 90s, we faced a surprisingly difficult challenge introducing recycled paper into our Kinko's stores. At that time, recycled paper was a specialty product, manufactured in relatively small quantities. As a result, it was more expensive than virgin bright white paper.  We introduced recycled paper at our stores in Portland, Oregon, a city known for its environmental consciousness. Yet customers balked at paying a half-cent more per sheet. 

This presented a quandary, because people wanted recycled paper, but did not want to pay more for it. We had a business to run, and did not want to shoulder the entire burden and expense of offering a more environmentally friendly choice. Our solution was to grow the market ourselves - we took a chance and made recycled paper the default choice in our thousands of copiers nationwide, significantly increasing demand and bringing down the price in the process.

I'm no longer affiliated with Kinko's, but I think other companies can do for chlorine-free paper products what Kinko's helped to do for recycled paper. I understand that FedEx cannot exactly adopt a "brown is beautiful" environmental campaign while competing with UPS, but there are quite a few shades still available between the bright white FedEx boxes and UPS brown.

For more information on eco-friendly paper products, check out this shopper's guide from the Natural Resources Defense Council.