Pressure group Friends of Print and Paper (FOPAP) has been launched to set the record straight on the environmental benefits of paper.

John Roche, one of the founding members and also managing director of Haybrooke Associates, said the forming of the group had been inevitable following WWF’s ‘Save a Tree’ campaign.

He said: "A group of colleagues and I had been working for some time on new methods for carbon accounting for wood-based products that seem to prove that printing on paper might not only be carbon neutral, but possibly a net absorber of carbon.

"Our findings show that current thinking on environmental initiatives, such as recycling paper for instance, might actually be more damaging to the climate change than not."