Nothing goes together like sustainability and free schwag.

Who says print is dead? After listening to the Tandemtalk on Thursday, it seems electronics are dead, in landfills. Reps from Central Michigan Paper (CMP), USPS, and French Paper came to Tandem Design in Traverse City to talk to a small group of designers, printers and other industry people about paper. Of course they wanted us to use more paper, but they came with startling data about how GOOD using paper actually is. Some of the most startling facts were about how much CO2 sending emails actually creates.

Some of the startling facts*:

• 70% of all toxic waste in U.S. landfills comes from electronic waste
• Burning a CD produces four times as much CO2 as printing one annual report
• 75% of all the electricity used in the home to power electronics is used by products that are turned off
• Spam emails sent annually have the carbon footprint of driving a car around the globe 1.6 million times
• It costs an estimated $2.8 billion in energy annually to leave computers sitting idle overnight in the U.S. alone. On a CO2 basis that is 20 million tons of carbon dioxide — the same amount produced by 4 million cars on the road

My favorites, since my man is a lumber jack:
• Decreasing your use of paper will not "save a tree". When demand for paper declines, tree farming declines taking with it all the important ecological impacts like clean water, wild life habitat and cleaner air.
• Does buying paper really help grow forests? Yes! In the next 30 years, the U.S. could lose 44 million acres of forest to development. When you choose paper you keep trees growing.
• 70% of U.S. timberland is privately owned, 30% is government owned.
• WOOD IS A RENEWABLE RESOURCE

*These facts were researched and compiled by CMP and presented to us in a power point and fact sheet.

The USPS representative followed the sustainability presentation with pointed ideas on how to limit your paper waste while still doing direct mail effectively. By creating more targeted lists of customers, having great offers, and following up with strong creative.

Some facts that were hard to ignore about mail:
• 60% of retailers say that catalogs are their primary sales channel
• Of retail shoppers 90 million consumers currently use coupons from their newspapers
• 2.24% is the direct order response rate from printed catalogs, .48% is the direct order response rate from emails
• 67% of online action is generated by offline messages. Catalogs and direct mail generate the second and third highest response rates after telemarketing.

And then of course, as shown in the photos above, the French Paper rep closed out strong with free French Paper promotions. I won an autographed Jerry French toy by answering correctly on the sustainability pop quiz. Fun, fun, and more fun.

My take away? (Besides free stuff) Use more paper, its good for the earth, and my honey bunny's job.