What?

Environmental organisations are easily inflamed when they speak of commercial flyers that are dropped in everyone's letterbox. In the Netherlands, these can be avoided by sticking a special No/No (or No/Yes) adhesive on the lid of the letterbox, but 90% of the consumers don't use it. In the mean time, the volume of the advertisements increases steadily.

Recently, environmental organisations in the Netherlands have asked the government to place a taxation on such brochures. GroenGemak is not convinced that this is a good idea, because it does not actually solve a problem. A true solution would be to enforce sustainable brochures, so nobody needs to be ashamed about spreading such advertisements, or reading them.

Why?

Brochures are worth their money. By definition, because they would cease to exist otherwise. The increase in the volume of brochures delivered to letterboxes even suggests that they are so profitable that there would be some space to charge a taxation of a few cents per brochure. But this would mainly attack small, local shops. Large chains, which by definition conflict with the need for reduction in transport, would be much less discouraged.

It is more useful to make brochures a doable system if both sender and recipient value it, providing it is not harmful for the environment. The current increasing flow of brochures, nowadays even wrapped in plastic, is far from harmless, so some things should definately change.

Sustainable brochures will be more expensive, but printing those will at least ensure their spreaders that the extra money is spent on something useful, whereas a form of taxation would mainly lead to money stuck in overhead and political games. Also more pleasant for senders of brochures is to know that taxation is not used as a means of putting pressure (which would increase if the effects are not sufficient) but that it simply is a situation where the full price for the production cycle is paid, rather than only a local piece of the cycle.

How?

Governments acting against advertisements, would do best to demand that such advertisements are made sustainably. This means things like using sustainable paper, sustainable inks and being charged for CO₂ and recycling the paper. It may prove necessary to distinguish large and small advertisers.

Paper can be reused ten times; after that, the quality of the cellulose has degraded too much. Put differently, 90% of the paper can be recycled, with 10% dropout. The use of sustainable paper would mean using recycled paper with an additional 10% FCS-paper at the expense of the advertiser.

Another need would be to use sustainable ink (and toner). Sustainability of inks would mean using bio-degradable, non-toxic inks that would preferrably be of plant origin. This is currently not fully possible, but when laws of this kind are announced to be enacted after a given number of years, it is highly probably that the graphical market will jump at it, and start producing such inks.

Fetching and recycling paper costs money, and these costs should be paid by the advertiser. They could be made part of the cost of the paper they use. Also with regards to sustainable brochure paper, it is likely that the graphical industry would provide us with the proper kind of paper when announced with some time before enacting the laws. Using special water marks or printed-on registration numbers, everybody could verify the paper used to comply with the law, making it an absolute requirement for brochures to be printed on such proper paper.

Brochures should nevermore be inseparable from plastics and other additional materials, as this would give problems when recycling them. This would probably apply mostly to the brochures handed out in show rooms. If materials are easily separable, such as plastic binding coils, they could be used if a good way of disposing the materials separately was ensured.

Finally, the brochure cycle produces CO₂, and the advertiser can be expected to compensate for that through CO₂-certificates, showable upon inspection.

Where?

Information about plant-based ink can be found on Plants For a Future.

The Recycling Network recently launched the idea of taxation on brochures in the Netherlands.

FSC informs us about FSC criteria.