Reusing resources delivers value, not simply added costs.  As I was reviewing data for my editor on US paper sourcing the Wall Street Journal published an article about Wall Street Banks running from clean energy and climate issues.  As new infrastructures emerge, costs don’t go back to the good old days.

Fifty years after the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) was signed into law (1976), reusing paper in the United States is more cost effective than beginning from scratch.  This chart from the Economic Census Data shows it is about 60 percent recycled paper sold, to 40 percent newly milled, paper sold. This is historical evidence of prior choices.

Simply put approximately 60 percent of the US paper supply is derived from used paper.  Before the recycled paper industry, the US mostly relied on newly made paper for 100 percent of paper use.  Back then, 100 percent of the used paper went into dumps, burn piles, and waterways.  The RCRA codified the externalities and provided a framework from which to find solutions.

One solution was find new uses (recycle) for lightly used paper.

Another solution has been to turn methane leakage into renewable natural gas.  Some of the 11 billion tons of waste-in-place producing landfill gas is likely turning paper from the 1980s into renewable natural gas today.

Indirectly, we send electronic files through our economy today.  I no longer receive the WSJ in paper form.  Simply the advance of technology has changed the demand and consumption of our US paper needs.  It does not work to go back.

Clean energy is more than an irrational passion, or dogma, to save the planet.  Using resources efficiently regardless of their source of origin is just good business.  It is just as dangerous to be polarized against one political issue as it is to be polarized to the opposite side.  Don’t get lost in the political spin of either side.  I taught undergraduate for years about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).  Corporations may take credit for looking good in the eyes of their consumers, but they only make technology conversion upgrades when it saves them costs.

We all count on investors to make the best choices.  Besides, Kermit The Frog has been coaching us for a long time that, ‘It ain’t easy being green.’