(This blog post is a wrap up of the San Francisco event on May 24th featuring Jeff Mendelsohn, CEO and Co-Founder of New Leaf Paper)
"The paper industry is one of the most resource intensive industries in the world, and one of the slowest to change."
From NewLeafpaper.com
"The paper industry is one of the most polluting and resource intensive industries in the world. It is responsible for over a third of worldwide timber harvest and over 40% of all landfill waste in the U.S. When New Leaf Paper was founded in 1998, the paper industry had demonstrated a high resistance to change. With low margins, a commoditized international market, and huge capital investment in the status quo, paper companies resisted efforts to integrate sustainable principles into their business practices," said Jeff Mendelsohn, founder of New Leaf Paper.
It was inspiring to hear Jeff Mendelsohn talk about the process of changing the 'stuck-in-its-ways' paper industry into a more sustainable system. How did New Leaf accomplish this? How did New Leaf survive in a challenging industry and succeed in making positive change.
Prior to New Leaf, Jeff started New York Recycled Paper Company in 1991 and is a pioneer of this industry. Around the same time various other recycled paper companies popped up around the US but all of them disappeared - except for New Leaf.
What did New Leaf do differently to be successful as a mission driven company within a challenging industry and actually drive change with in it?
How do you change an industry?
Jeff says, "There's a lot of barriers and it's challenging. The paper industry is very resistant to change. Paper mills were designed to make paper a certain way for a quarter of a century, non-stop, to make money. To overcome these challenges, New Leaf created a strategic brand strategy. To change an industry, Jeff mentions you have to first present a positive vision for it. Despite the unsustainable ways of the paper industry, New Leaf never pointed fingers at anyone or pointed out how bad they are. Instead they approached the industry with a "Think and Smile" approach.
"Think and Smile" came to New Leaf due to the understanding that they would never win on a "commodity tunnel vision scenario." "We need people to think about what they're buying and we need them to smile, due to good design, and good products. A lot of environmental messaging before was 'think and frown', which doesn't get you very far."
Four principles New Leaf used to change the industry
- Positive vision
- Partnership up and down the supply chain
- Transparency
- Quantifying benefits
Jeff says that a company has to start with a Vision and ask questions, such as "What would a sustainable paper industry look like?"
It all boils down to a sustainable design. Designing an industry, designing a process.
What is sustainable design?
Wiki: Sustainable design (also called environmental design, environmentally sustainable design, environmentally conscious design, etc.) is the philosophy of designing physical objects, the built environment, and services to comply with the principles of economic, social, and ecological sustainability.
New Leaf created a vision for a perfect sustainable mill and identified existing mills that met this vision. At this time, there where only about 3 or 4 in North America; New Leaf wanted to increase this number.
New Leaf's goal became to make the mills even greener. "In changing the paper industry, no one is just going to invest in a green mill without researching the markets. Our role was to "seed" markets and create new products in all these different product categories where nothing existed beyond 20 or 30% recycled paper." To do this, New Leaf bumped up the recycled content to 100% and gave it a clean bleaching process. The goal: "Attract demand, attract competitors and then eventually shift mill design."
Jeff discussed, "attracting competitors," which sounded counter-intuitive to me at first. However, it makes sense when your goal is not just for your own personal gain, but for the betterment of humanity and the planet at large. It would be quite difficult for one company to change an entire industry alone. In this instance, attracting "competitors" is also attracts a more sustainable future. New Leaf was then able to sell their vision to their customers and leverage the demand of these huge companies to drive change up through the supply line.
Bank of America approached New Leaf
B of A wanted to change their letter head to 100% recycled post-consumer paper. New Leaf created their first 100% post consumer letterhead for Bank of America, inspiring most mills in this arena to create competing grades of paper, creating a permanent shift in the market for high-end corporate collateral.
Book publishing - Harry Potter
In 2001, New Leaf created book paper. In 2003, the company provided the paper for the viral book, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," catching the attention of the entire book publishing industry. New Leaf decided not to pursue using book paper in its product line, but is proud of the impact it had on getting larger publishing companies to start using 100% post-consumer paper.
The event last month went well, and we were very lucky to hear about such an inspiring, dynamic company that truly cares about creating change in their industry.
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Prior to meeting Jeff I already owned a New Leaf notebook which I keep on me as an alternative to taking notes on my tiny-keyboard smart phone. When I open the 'made from old milk carton' notebook, on the first page of the notebook are cool facts on the amount of post-consumer waste New Leaf has saved (greenhouse gases, fully grown trees, gallons of water, etc.) A live updated version of these stats are found at the top of their website.
