Today I make no apology for returning to the topic of printing businesses doing their bit to promote the sustainable nature of print and paper, on the basis we can never do too much in this regard.

This morning's post included a very useful missive from CEPI (the Confederation of European Paper Industries), containing a précis of its 2009 Sustainability Report. This provides some valuable ammunition for all those keen to propagate positive messages about print and paper.

Selected highlights, thus:

• The European pulp and paper industry is the biggest single user and producer of bio-energy in Europe - 54.4% of the energy used in papermaking is biomass-based
• 94% of electricity produced on site is using combined heat and power
• CEPI members have reduced CO2 emissions per tonne of paper by 42% since 1990
• More than 95% of CEPI member companies use tracing systems to verify that wood purchased is the result of legal logging
• 82% of European forests are certified by independent forestry certification schemes
• Paper recycling rate increased to 66.6%, beating the target set for 2010
• More than 50% of raw material used for papermaking is recovered paper
  

What's more, the report has received a B+ rating from the Global Reporting Initiative, so it has an independent stamp of authenticity. You can download a PDF here, or request a printed copy by emailing mail@cepi.org.

I also noticed that CEPI has a nice variation on the sort of tag line that we in print should endeavour to use on our own printed materials: "This is a renewable, durable, re-usable and recyclable paper product - naturally supporting your ideas!". Nice.

The report is yet more evidence that we as an industry are jumping through all sorts of hoops on certification and transparency of information. Now remind me, what's Google's carbon footprint? This figure is curiously unavailable. The internet giant initially pledged to become carbon neutral by the end of 2007, at the end of last year it still hadn't managed it.

It's good to know that in the European paper industry, actions are speaking just as loud as words.