Our industry seems once again to be slightly behind the public relations campaign being conducted in advertising media. These three recent items make the point:

Xerox came out with a press release on 30 Jul 07 touting a new groundwood paper approved for use in their equipment. Salient points they made: Groundwood has twice the yield from trees of previously approved papers, hence takes less trees; groundwood is less energy intensive to manufacture and is made partially with hydroelectric power.

esurance, an online insurance company, is advertising that since their business is all electronic, there are no paper forms and they save trees in a big way.

Enterprise Rent-a-Car is advertising that they are planting 50 million trees. Two things they don't say: (1) these are to offset the carbon dioxide emissions of their fleet and (2) anything about paper. Regarding the second point, however, it is implicit in the commercials that these trees are not being planted to be cut later.

Yet again, subtly or otherwise, the pulp and paper industry looks like the bad guys. Where are our advertisements with good points about our industry? For instance, how much carbon dioxide has been absorbed over the decades by trees planted by the forest products industry? We continue to fail to make our good points with the timeliness, frequency, distribution and quality of our detractors. Public relations is important, especially when you are being beaten up regularly. I have followed our efforts in this area for twenty years--we have never been ahead of the game--our responses are weak, reactive and late. This failure has cost us revenue, profitability and jobs in an industry that should have a great story to tell.