How green is your paper?

Last Monday, I went to Focus on Imaging at the NEC. It's great to have one of Europe's largest photo industry shows right at my doorstep.

Lots of great new kit (Canon's new flagship 5dMIII, new Nikons (but no Nikon charity raffle this year), the beautiful Fuji X-Pro 1), good talks, beautiful models, even minor celebrities (James and Ola from Strictly). And what excited me most? Paper.

Yes, the wonderful range of inkjet photo paper from a number of manufacturers. There's so much beautiful paper out there, both matt and glossy. I own an Epson 2880 printer, and I love printing and framing my own pictures. There is something special about making the physical artefact, at least a tiny bit back to the film and darkroom days of photography (I used to have a B&W darkroom as a teenager).

The next day we went to Stirchley Market where we sold a decent number of my postcards. That started me thinking: could I print the postcards myself?

At the moment, we have the photos printed by CEWE in Germany, and mount them onto recycled card stock . Commercial photo printers still use a chemical process onto modern photo paper (plastic), and produce chemical waste. Printing myself, apart from being a rewarding process, could be a lot more environmentally friendly. It might also be less labour intensive, and hopefully not much more expensive?

So, I started to find out about the environmental background of different papers. I asked the guys at www.on-linepaper.co.uk, and Simon Redgrove was very helpful, suggesting I look at Innova. I did, and asked them and some other suppliers about their environmental policy. This is what I found out so far - and it looks surprisingly positive:

Hahnemühle have a clear environmental policy (though I'd like that to be a bit more explicit) and support ecological projects. I love Hahnemühle's Bamboo paper - as the name implies, it's made from Bamboo, so potentially a green source. But it's a matt paper, so not ideal for postcards, and quite expensive.

Innova have a very clear environmental policy. They confirmed by email that all their stock is FSC sourced, though because the coating they put on the paper, the paper itself does not carry the FSC logo.

Similarly, St. Cuthberts Mill (also makers of Somerset papers) have a very clear environmental statement, claiming their stock is from 'sustainable sources'.

To my surprise, Permajet also claim that all their raw material is FSC certified. There's nothing about that on their web site, but they've promised to send me a statement from their mill. Permajet's paper is more budget-friendly, so I am really hoping they can document that claim (also, I want to switch to their continuous ink system).

Rag (cotton) paper is an interesting case - cotton production often has a negative impact (water use, pesticides, GM crop), but the material used is the outer husks, which are a by-product of the cotton industry. For that reason, this very good review of photographic paper argues that cotton paper is the best choice as long as you don't have certified FSC stock.

I haven't had a reply yet from Fotospeed, and there are a few more manufacturers I might contact.

In terms of costs, it turns out that the whole enterprise is a lot more difficult. Ink cost is just about OK when using a CIS (about 17p per A5 print, compared to 68p with Epson inks...). The paper however can quickly cost 1£ or more for an A4 sheet (to fold to A5). It looks like the only way to do it is to print onto 4x6 inkjet paper (about 12p) and stick that onto the recycled card stock...