I read this on a brown paper fast food bag tonight:
"This bag may contain an average of 30% post consumer material."
This struck me as rather noncommittal. “May contain”? They’re not sure? I’m guessing 30% might be some sort of minimum to call a paper product recycled, does anyone know for sure?
To me it comes across as the franchise saying “Sure we care about using recycled paper for our bags, care enough to even print something about it on the bag. However we don’t actually insist that our bag suppliers use recycled paper exclusively, so we have to word the message on the bag carefully, or we might get in trouble for making false claims.”
So the question is, what would prevent one of the top national fast food franchises from telling their bag suppliers that they want bags to meet a certain standard for post consumer recycled paper content?
Would it drive the price up that much more?
Could it be that the supply of recycled paper is volatile, and when the advertising designers put together the layout for the printing on a future bag, they have no way of knowing with certainty the bags will meet a minimum recycled paper standard?
Relax! That 30% is referring to recycled paper indeed!
I am not sure yet, but cities do have regulations on recycling that require that 30% post-recycle ratio. I guess this a case of business following the government’s lead.
But are they following the government’s lead? The bag said it “may contain” not that it “does contain”. They could have just as easily put a statment on there saying “Food in this bag may contain nutritional value,” and while we all know that’s not the case, by using “may” they have an out.
It’s almost as if they want to make a claim about it being recycled paper, but would somehow open themselves up to some liability if they do.
"As someone who works in the paper industry, particulary on a paper machine that has a wasteplant and has the capacity to make recycled cartonboard, I think I can give you an answer with some confidence.
During a make of the semi-recycled paper grade, there may be a failure in the wasteplant or other interruption to the fibre supply - so rather than STOP the machine you can change to 100% virgin fibre. A reasonable machine shut can cost up to $80k per hour. They will avoid shutting the machine due to a wasteplant failure (due to what people put in their recycle bins, wasteplants are notorious for breakdown) or other lack of recycled fibres.
Other reasons could be that there is no waste available, or the bag printers have absolutely no idea what the paper mill will be making for them as they may be purchasing some kind of off-specification product. Realistically, however, if we guarantee 30% recycled because X Takeaway Chain wants 30%, we put in 30%.
A side note, fibres that have been recycled multiples of time eventually get so small that they cannot possibly bond together, producing a weaker bag/box.
My intuition would be that there are labeling standards which require the manufacturer to disclose the ratio of recycled material in products, and whether the material is post-consumer or post-industrial, since recycled products seem to always indicate a percentage and distinguish between p.i./p.c.
Cussed if I can find anything tangible on that, though.
In the U.S., Executive order #13101 mandates, amongst other things, that federal agencies are only allowed to purchase consumables that contain recycled content, and specifies the content required. Copy paper, for example must have at least 30% post-consumer material. Unless it’s too expensive, comparitively, in which case they can squeak by with 20%.
Maybe standards like these (adopted by government and private institutions,) merely encourage manufacturers to make the percentage of recovered material in each product easily apprehensible (is that a word?)
The city of Seattle, for example, requires:
As more and more entities adopt policies like this, it makes good economic sense just to comply as a matter-of-course.
This still doesn’t explain the “may contain” angle, unless they’re just counting on putting one over on the occasional sleepy purchaser, which doesn’t seem altogether likely.
Previewing this, I see it’s not as coherant as I’d like it to be. That’s what happens after 3:00am. I also see Mr. Cazzle came through with the “may contain” explanation. I love this place.
Did a little more “research” since my last post. A brown paper bag from a competing takeout chain uses the wording “Bag made with recycled paper. Minimum 20% post-consumer content. 100% total recycled content.” This competing chain also has the triangular mobius arrows “Recycle” logo, where as the initial bag I asked about sports the “Put trash in it’s place” stick figure tossing something into a waste basket logo.
It would seem that the first chain’s policy is “send us 30% if you got it, but if you can’t, that’s ok too” and the second chain’s policy is “Don’t send us less than 20% at all.”
This raises the question though, because Chain B seems more exacting in their standards, do they end up paying a little more for their bags, a price that eventually gets passed on to the consumer?
Funny you should mention that! We debated over Mr Cazzle’s post for sometime, and eventually erased the part that said that recycled product is of lesser quality and (when unbleached) is cheaper. Insisting on more recycled material is not likely to cost more, it’s likely to be cheaper but also weaker bag stock.
He’s not here at the moment, so I hope I got that right.
Mr Cazzle has added that there may be a difference between “recycled” and “post-consumer” materials. Paper companies frequently make paper that is off-specification for whatever reason. One of the ways they minimise their loss on this is to put the paper back into the system, reslush it and turn it back into pulp ready for use to make more paper. This in Australia is not allowed to be considered recycling, however it may not be the case in the US or other countries. Therefore, “recycled” material may refer to some “pre-consumer” materials - fibres that were made into product that couldn’t be sold, reslushed and “recycled” to make more paper.
Indeed – in the U.S., this is the distinction between “post-consumer” and merely “recycled” content.
Y’know how it costs between $50 and $100 to replace a broken tail light? When I used to work at the plastics warehouse, we used to get gaylords full of those with tiny, almost imperceptible scratches for which we paid only pennies per pound; they had been rejected by Quality Control. We ground 'em up and sold the grind which was melted into new products. Those products could accurately be labeled as recycled, but it was never material reclaimed from consumer trash piles.
