Once a year on the afternoon of Dec. 31, you could stroll through the Financial District of San Francisco and find yourself in a blizzard of white. Not snow, but paper - desk calendar pages thrown with wild abandon from every available window and rooftop. Fragments of the past year would float past your eyes offering glimpses of business meetings at 10 a.m. and power lunches at the Fairmont. The late afternoon sunlight would almost be obliterated in the paper deluge that looked like confetti on steroids.
The San Francisco Chronicle's Herb Caen would cluck at the waste in his newspaper column, street cleaning crews (on overtime, of course) would sweep through the drifts of days and San Franciscans would head home for the New Year's festivities.The last New Year's I worked in San Francisco was in 1986, but I'll bet a nickle that there is now a city ordinance banning this littering blitz. You don't have to be a card-carrying member of the Sierra Club to know that conserving and recycling are the Earth's best hope.
Using recycled products is a triple good deed. Not only do you conserve natural resources, but you save the energy that would have been used to produce a new product and you conserve dwindling landfill space as well.
Recycling newspapers, re-using paper bags at supermarkets or using a canvas bag have become a part of Americans' consciousness. But the recycled paper chase should be extended from individual Americans to corporate and business America.
I love browsing in an office supply store almost as much as in a bookstore. Recently I thought about my own paper consumption and realized that organizing files and clippings, whether in a writer's study or corporate headquarters, can use a lot of paper.
So there was one surprised public relations officer who received a phone call in New York the very day his press kit hit my desk. How could I not follow up immediately on the prospect of recycled office supplies?
The Esselte Pendaflex Corp., one of the world's largest office supply companies, will introduce an office supply line in August called "EarthWise." This will be the first complete office filing supply system to use paper manufactured from 100 percent recycled fibers, with a minimum of 10 percent post-consumer content.
Say what? "Post-consumer" must surely mean after someone has used it. How can the other 90 percent be recycled if it hasn't been used already? A call to Esselte Corp. provided some recycling information.
A recycled paper product with a 10 percent "post-consumer" make-up is considered a high percentage. The 90 percent that is "pre-consumer" is post-industrial waste such as the trimmings after envelopes are made or end rolls of newsprint. While the paper actually hasn't been used, it would certainly have been discarded.
So while there is pre-consumer and post-consumer - it's all 100 percent recycled.
The EarthWise line will include hanging file folders; interior file folders; standard and Manila file folders; expanding file pockets; report covers and portfolios.
For everyone who's grown tired of seeing the standard tacky, khaki green in their filing cabinets, EarthWise has five new earth-tone hues: natural brown, standard green, blue, red and violet. (Can't you just imagine using violet folders for a special `kinder, gentler' file?)
So recycle those newspapers and tote that canvas bag to the grocery store. And the next time someone orders office supplies, tell them to save a tree.