For most of us, our conscious environmental acts begin with paper, by recycling newspaper, cardboard, and perhaps mixed paper. By putting those bits of paper back into the production stream instead of into the waste stream, we put in place one piece of the loop between consumption and production. Unfortunately, the loop doesn't always get completed. The paper we send to recyclers hasn't always gone back into products, and some has ended up in landfills--mainly because the demand for recycled products hasn't been great enough to make it cost-effective to equip mills to handle recycled stock, and then get a competitively-priced paper product on the market. "Recycled" pulp from other sources than consumers, much of which is simply the waste product of lumber milling, has been used much more widely than post-consumer pulp in paper making, largely due to price and availability factors.

But as more consumers and corporations look for recycled content in their buying decisions, and specifically post-consumer content, those market dynamics are changing. With the greater demand, the variety of recycled content paper products has increased, and the prices have come down.

There are factors to consider in choosing an environmentally friendly paper, however, other than its recycled content. There's bleaching, the use of acids, and perhaps most importantly, the growing scarcity of wood pulp. In this column, we'll explore the bleaching issue, look at some exciting alternative "tree-free" papers, and point you to some sources where you can find the perfect paper.

Bleached Paper

Paper manufacturers use chlorine to bleach paper bright white. The chlorine, after being used in the paper making process and making its way back into the environment, creates chemicals called "organochlorines." These are poisions, like dioxin, which causes cancers, birth defects, immune system damage and other health problems--even death in humans and other animals. (For more about organochlorines and their interaction with the environment, see "Paper Poisons.")

So if bleaching is so bad, why do they do it?

Simply because people like really white paper. Sometimes it's not that an off-white paper is less functional, we just prefer the white. Yet, while market demands drive production, if we want to see less bleaching done, we can be effective by simply buying unbleached products. Take coffee filters, for example: do you really need something to be white that's going to be brown as soon as you use it anyway? Brown, unbleached coffee filters are the way to go (if you have to use a paper filter at all).

Fortunately, for those cases where the paper really does need to be white, there are other chemicals, less toxic than chlorine, that can do the job just as well. And papers bleached without the use of chlorine are just as high-quality--sometimes higher quality--than regular paper. Some non-chlorine bleached papers are off-white or speckled, while others are as white as their chlorine bleached counterparts.

Paper products for which you can find non-chlorine bleached alternatives

• writing paper
• printing paper
• toilet paper
• paper towels
• paper napkins
• file folders
• note pads
• cash register tape

How to read the packages

These terms are used for chlorine-free products on their packages:

unbleached

These products have not been whitened with chlorine or any other chemical.

secondarily chlorine free or processed chlorine free

These are recycled papers that have not been bleached with chlorine. (Most recycled paper fibers were bleached with chlorine at some time so they are not totally free of chlorine now.)

totally chlorine free

These products have never been bleached with chlorine, but they may have been whitened through another process.

Elemental chlorine free

These papers have been bleached with chlorine dioxide. This process still results in some organochlorine pollution.

What you can do about bleached paper

• Complete the loop--buy recycled papers!
• Buy paper products that aren't bleached with chlorine. When you buy non-chlorine bleached paper, you're telling paper manufactuers that you demand safer alternatives. The more consumers demand chlorine-free papers, the more companies will make products without using--or polluting with--chlorine.
• Ask your retailer to offer chlorine free products.
• Urging your local government, your workplace or your school to buy chlorine free paper.
• Writing to product manufacturers and requesting that they stop using chlorine.
• Encouraging friends and family to buy chlorine free products
• Calling or writing your elected leaders and asking them to support laws that encourage paper companies to use chlorine alternatives.

Where to buy

Chlorine-free paper-making is the standard in some countries like Sweden and Germany. It can still be a challenge for consumers to find chlorine-free products in the U.S., but here are some places you can buy these paper products. Many office supply stores will be glad to order them for you if they don't normally stock them.

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Sources for this article included Washington Citizens for Resource Conservation, SUCCESS magazine, Industrial Hemp, and The Phoenix Gazette.