Wedding Professionals Resources

We have just updated our resources for Wedding Professionals.

We now have Wedding Paper Collection Chip Charts to help with the initial paper selection process. Moving forward we have Wedding Paper Collection Sample Packs to let Wedding Professionals and Brides to be the opportunity to touch and feel select wedding papers before they buy. And finally the Wedding Paper Chip Charts and Wedding Paper Sample Packs lead buyers to our Wedding Paper Collections where buyers get the opportunity to buy these specially selected papers to include within their wedding projects.

As well we offer Design Templates and Color Theory books.

Sunday Morning to air show on Finch Paper land sale

The Sunday morning news show, Sunday Morning, is scheduled to air a show showing the extraordinary terrain within the Adirondacks Park recently purchased by the Nature Conservancy from Finch Paper this Summer.

Sunday Morning is expected to air the show on Sunday December 30th. The show airs 9:00 to 10:30 hosted by Charles Osgood.

The beautiful places captured on video include:

The Boreas Ponds, with spectacular views of the High Peaks Wilderness

The Boreas River, a major tributary of the Hudson River, with ice and snow closing in on a ribbon of open water

The Branch River, also a Hudson River tributary, cascading through a mature floodplain forest.

As per my previous post this is a great example of land preservation. Enjoy.

Envelope Printing with Soy Ink - No Sacrifice

I'm really pleased to announce that we've made another good step forward in our sustainability project. We are now printing all of our envelopes with soy inks. This is another example of our being able to identify an opportunity and to target a solution.

The advantages of using soy inks are many. Using soy ink offers safe and sustainable alternatives to using conventional oil based inks. We've found that printing with soy inks produces images with the same good quality as conventional inks.

There is no sacrifice in using soy based inks and it has a positive environmental impact. A benefit of using soy ink is that it is lower in Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC's), making it safer and less toxic. As well, soy is a renewable resource and is made here in the USA. Another added benefit of using soy ink is that at the end of the product's life when the printed envelope makes its way to the recycling process, soy ink is more easily stripped from the paper during the de-inking process than petroleum based inks.

Printing with soy inks is another incremental step that you can make to improve your overall environmental impact. When you have your envelopes printed with soy inks you are entitled to use the soy ink log and show that you've made the choice to support sustainable printing.

Recycled Packing Materials

Our search for more recycled and lower impact packaging materials to use throughout our company has taken on a life of its own. It's become fun to search out and find the best materials available.

I'm proud to report that all of the packaging materials we use for shipping out customer orders on The Paper Mill Store are now recycled. As previously reported we've had 50% recycled shipping boxes since this summer. As of today our packing materials are as follows.

• 50% recycled fiber shipping boxes
• 20% recycled plastic filler
• 85% recycled printed box tape

I'd like to thank everyone on the team who made this possible. Let's keep up the good work and meet the next sustainable challenge.

Our Business Case for Sustainability

We've had a compelling story to tell lately about the new initiatives we've taken to improve the way our business operates. I recently wrote an article for the Environmental News Network (ENN). Our story is about one company. Imagine if every small and large company took what steps they could to operate in a less negatively environmentally impactful manner.

Domtar to Close Port Edwards, WI Paper Mill

Another major paper mill closure has been announced today. Domtar has reported their intention to close the Port Edwards Wisconsin paper mill during the first half of 2008. Port Edwards is a mill with a long history of making fine papers.

In Domtar's letter to its customers dated today they do not give a specific reason for the closure. They do however imply that they have excess capacity within their manufacturing system and will create a transition plan for Port Edwards products to be manufactured at other Domtar paper mills.

I can only speculate that this action is due to the ongoing divergence between manufacturing capacity and market demand with the North American markets.

Get Ready SFI is coming in a Big Way!

The Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) is coming to a market near you. SFI is a non-profit third party independent sustainable forestry certification organization dedicated to certifying sustainable forestry practices in North America.

These folks have been in existence since 1995 and until now have been quietly working to protect N. American forests. They currently have 130 million acres certified as part of their program. A growing number of supply chain participants across the continent of which The Paper Mill Store is working towards joining with a hopeful certification date of the end of this month December 2007 is making it easier to purchase and specify SFI paper and envelopes.

SFI has committed to a multi million dollar advertising campaign targeting the major cities of N. America. Over this past Thanksgiving holiday week I found myself on a plane headed towards New York City, reading the NYT. I saw a large ad touting SFI. Upon landing and walking around Manhattan I saw numerous bus stop and telephone booth signage advertising SFI. SFI has been a sleeping giant and according to their President & C.E.O. Kathy Abusow those days are over. Kathy reported to me that SFI intends to get their message out to the marketplace and help to build demand for SFI certified wood products. This is the only forest certification program targeted at the specific needs and circumstances of N. America's forest which are largely made up of patchworks of privately owned land.

Keep your eyes and ears open as you are going to hear a lot more about this important organization.

Square Envelopes Make a Statement

Due to overwhelming demand The Paper Mill Store envelope department has added a huge inventory of various square envelope sizes. We found that all envelope square sizes are in great demand from our customers. We've added squares from 5 x 5 square envelopes to 9 1/2 x 9 1/2 square envelopes and in all sizes in between by 1/2 increments.

We have economical white square envelopes using Wausau Paper's Exact Ice paper and premium translucent square envelopes using CTI Paper USA's Glama Natural. Glama Natural is an Forest Stewardship Council certified paper so you can know that the fiber used to make this envelope came from well managed forests.

The Paper Mill Store Now Has the Largest Online Inventory of Strathmore Paper and Envelopes

Just these past few weeks The Paper Mill Store has made a major inventory commitment to make the Strathmore line of paper and envelopes available in all markets for next day delivery. Working closely with our friends at Mohawk Fine Papers, we established a list of 184 envelope items that we have on our floor in our Paper Valley, Wisconsin warehouse ready to ship today.

Strathmore is a great line of paper. It is Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified, made with wind power and produced carbon neutral, with recycled options and tree free cotton options. As one of the oldest and best known lines of text and cover paper in North America we're happy to be among the newest suppliers to offer this great line of papers to everyone in all markets.

The problem that we recognized was that if a graphic designer wanted to use a Strathmore Green Heather A6 envelope it was almost impossible for them to get that specific envelope quickly and in a reasonable quantity, like one box of 250 envelopes. Now this is an easy exercise for anyone to accomplish through our enlarged stocking commitment.