Paper production is a notoriously pollution-rich process.
One of the most toxic and least necessary chemicals currently used is
chlorine.  Paper mills use chlorine
and chlorine gas to bleach pulp for brighter white paper products. One might
make an argument for bright white printing paper, but really, do we need bright
white toilet paper, napkins, and paper towels?  For that matter, how bright does printing paper really have
to be?  Why do FedEx boxes and
envelopes have to be bright white? Will they lose packages if they cannot see
them in the dark?

Paper mills dump tons of dioxins - byproducts of the
chlorine bleaching process - into American streams and rivers. Dioxins
accumulate in fat cells, and have been implicated in higher cancer rates, as
well as reproductive and developmental harm in both animals and humans. If
paper mills only had to bleach a very few premium products, how much less
dioxin would be released into the environment?

Better still, mills could use less environmentally damaging
bleach agents, such as hydrogen peroxide, which produces byproducts of water
and oxygen. The paper industry might need a little nudging. I think the most
effective way to move paper mills from chlorine to less damaging chemicals is
to build a viable market for unbleached products. That's why I've asked my
partners and coworkers to switch to chlorine-free paper products.

Back in the late 80s and early 90s, we faced a surprisingly
difficult challenge introducing recycled paper into our Kinko's stores. At that
time, recycled paper was a specialty product, manufactured in relatively small
quantities. As a result, it was more expensive than virgin bright white
paper.  We introduced recycled
paper at our stores in Portland, Oregon, a city known for its environmental
consciousness. Yet customers balked at paying a half-cent more per sheet. 

This presented a quandary, because people wanted recycled
paper, but did not want to pay more for it. We had a business to run, and did
not want to shoulder the entire burden and expense of offering a more
environmentally friendly choice. Our solution was to grow the market ourselves
- we took a chance and made recycled paper the default choice in our thousands
of copiers nationwide, significantly increasing demand and bringing down the
price in the process.

I'm no longer affiliated with Kinko's, but I think other
companies can do for chlorine-free paper products what Kinko's helped to do for
recycled paper. I understand that FedEx cannot exactly adopt a "brown is
beautiful" environmental campaign while competing with UPS, but there are quite
a few shades still available between the bright white FedEx boxes and UPS brown.

For more information on eco-friendly paper products, check
out this shopper's guide
from the Natural Resources Defense Council.