The popular Paperlinx carbon balanced papers project with the World Land Trust is set to continue despite the collapse of the paper merchant that had sponsored it.
The programme had enabled printers to certify that the carbon associated with the paper used in a job or for a customer over a period, had been balanced by donations to the World Land Trust enabling it to preserve tracts of rain forest in South America.
The scheme was popular among printers that were able to market the fact that they were a certified carbon balanced printer and among customers who could display a certificate to show how much carbon had been offset in this way. a website carried out the calculations and logged the paper used, making it simple to administer.
But with the demise of Paperlinx it seemed as if the scheme would be buried in debris of the company’s collapse. However, a number of printers have urged the World Land Trust to continue, albeit in a different form.
Jonathan Tame, now country manager at Two Sides, was instrumental in setting up the scheme while in charge of environmental matters at Paperlinx. He says: “We are in discussions and working with the World Land Trust to see how we can keep this going as a service for printers, how they can keeping using this environmental standard
“I would be surprised if we needed with a system linked to just one paper distributor for the reasons that have transpired here. And we have been talking with most of the paper suppliers about what we might do.”
Roger Wilson, head conservationist at World Land Trust and its head of special projects, is supportive of the efforts. “We are very aware that a lot of printers and their clients seem to like the scheme and we don’t want to let them down.”
As an interim measure World Land Trust has put in place a means of assessing and valuing the carbon for a job and accepting payment for the amount being balanced. A certificate with the World Land Trust logo will be issued as before he adds. And the charity would want the scheme to continue as it supported a lot of conservation work he explains. “We are rather proud of what we have been able to do with the support of this scheme.”
The longer term solution will be built around a website as before, though whether the balancing fee will be embedded in the cost of the paper as before remains to be sorted. “We are hoping that normal service will be resumed in the near future,” says Tame.
Because of the embedded payment in the paper supplied by Paperlinx, the World Land Trust will be a creditor of the failed business. Wilson believes the impact will be minimal “only affecting those jobs that were paid for in the very last month and which were not processed through to us. There is an outstanding invoice that has to be settled.”
A small levy applied to carbon balanced papers in the Paperlinx scheme was retained and handed to the World Land Trust to fund forest conservation in the tropics.
