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A New York Times Co. vice president touted the Northeast Recycling Council -- a compact of 10 Northeastern states -- and that group's rules as an example of how recycling use rates can continue to grow.
The council rules satisfy regulators, the newspaper industry in those states, environmentalists and ultimately the citizenry, he said. The Times' Stephen Golden said the council has cleared a new path for non-punitive, responsible rules that won't harm business but also move toward improving the environment.
"There's only one problem with [original recycling goals set by state governments nationwide]," he told the Press and Materials Segment during the "What's New in Newsprint" session. "They were not obtainable."
Proposed NERC guidelines allow post-industrial and not just post-consumer waste to be counted against recycled-content goals, all of which are voluntary. And the philosophy of newspapers and regulators alike moved from one of "landfill avoidance" to realizing that recycling is a good business practice, he said.
Although a goal of 40 percent was once believed obtainable by the year 2000, papers realized the goal wasn't reachable, Golden said. They had reached 11 percent in '92 and 23 percent in '95, he said.
A new century and higher demand will test the compact's conclusions but Golden believes they are proven enough to apply elsewhere. But more than newspapers and other printers will have to be involved. He called on paper mills to put recycling-friendly equipment in new mills and during retrofits.
Tom Atkins, a consultant at the Los Angeles Times/Times Mirror Co., reviewed that company's efforts to refit its presses to run at a 50-inch web width. The work should be done by Oct. 23 on the 16 12-unit, 43-couple presses, he said.
The change will save some of the 350,000 tons of newsprint the Times uses annually. It also will require page reductions during the changeover of 7.4 percent vertically for broadsheet pages and horizontally for tabloid pages. By Jan. 1, 2000, the company will ask advertisers to begin reducing their ads by 7.4 percent, he said.
Ciba's Sam Chinnis, marketing manager, talked about use of fluorescent dyes to increase brighteners for newsprint.
--by Bob Sims