Carbon Footprint of Printing and Postage
Carbon Neutral printing and postage sends a green message and is inexpensive. Sending packages, marketing material, and letters through the mail is an indirect source of greenhouse gas emissions. The carbon footprint of your direct marketing campaign, order fulfillment, or daily love letters can be calculated and offset easily. Here is how to begin:
1. Calculate the weight of all the items you send
2. To find the emissions (in lbs) from postage, multiply the total weight by .01
3. To find the emissions (in lbs) from printed paper, multiply the total weight by 1.5
4. Add the totals from #3 and #4-this is the approximate carbon footprint.
The cost of offsetting marketing materials, Catalogs and and other items sent through the mail is small. At Standard Carbon, we make things extra simple and build in some margin for error by offsetting postage at the rate of 1lb/Co2 for every piece up to 12 ounces. Large shipments and print jobs can be calculated and offset with a couple minutes calculations. The bottom line-it is easier than you think to be Carbon Neutral!
Reasoning: The US Postal Service uses approximately 121 million gallons of fossil fuel every year to deliver about 25.9 billion pounds of mail. This is about .01lbs of CO2 for every lb of mail that is sent. The paper that is used in printed material is composed of cellulose which is about 40% carbon by weight. When this cellulose decomposes, the carbon becomes C02 gas that weighs 3.67 times more (add O2). Thus, the Carbon footprint from a piece of paper is about 1.5 times its actual weight.
January 27th, 2009 at 7:03 pm
Did you consider the removal of trees as carbon sinks? Cutting down the tree and the manufacture of paper also A) removes the ability of the tree to sequester carbon and B) consumes energy / releasing carbon in the manufacturing of the paper.
January 29th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
We studied the various paper making processes and applied 1.5 as ghg pollution factor based upon the removal of the tree as a carbon sink, and a large built-in fudge factor. With sustainable forest management, this carbon sink will hopefully be replaced.
Many of the paper mills we studied are using “black liquor,” a paper manufacturing by product, as well as other alternative fuels to power their operations. It is not uncommon for a pulp and paper mill to be almost self propelled as far as energy use.
It would be interesting to see some more data about water pollution from paper production. This seems to be the most significant pollution source from older plants. Any ideas?