The year-long campaign has been allocated approximately £2m worth of advertising space across UK national and regional newspapers and magazines and it expects to gain upwards of 50m page views.
It is the biggest print sustainability campaign ever to be put forward by the graphic communications value chain, believes Two Sides’ Martyn Eustace.
Publishing houses IPC Media, Future, The Telegraph Group, The Mirror Group and The Newspaper Society as well as the Professional Publishers Association (PPA) and Newspaper Publishers Association (NPA) are supporting the campaign, which "presents its industry in the best environmental light," according to Eustace.
PPA chief executive Barry McIlheney said: "We want to make sure that, in choosing a printed magazine, readers fully understand that print media also offers a natural reading experience and can be a sustainable way to read."
NPA director David Newell added: "We take our environmental responsibilities very seriously and this campaign helps to get the good messages about forests and recycling into the public domain."
The crusade to promote the responsible use of print media has already been launched in Portugal, Austria, and Belgium and will begin to circulate throughout Europe over the next 12 months.
It aims to change consumer attitudes towards the sustainability of print media based on research conducted by Two Sides and IPSOS. In September 2011, 5,000 consumer interviews found that 80% media users preferred reading from paper than a screen.
Eustace said: "The graphic communication industry has a terrific environmental record but we feel that consumer concerns are misplaced."
Adverts promote positive statistics from industry sources, such as the fact that 70% of paper is recycled in Europe and that European forests are 30% larger than in 1950, growing at an annual rate equivalent to 1.5m football pitches.
An accompanying website has been developed, which can be accessed by QR codes featured on printed adverts, to promote videos on the sustainability of the paper and forestry industries. Overall spend is already in excess of €5m (£4m). It is expected that the campaign will launch in the United States and Australia in 2013.
Eustace added: "There has been a mass switch to digital media over the past few years but we need to strike a balance. We want consumers to be able to read for as long as they want and realise that printed media is a sustainable way to receive and communicate information."
