Patagonia Catalogue Joins Trend to Recycled Paper

Since its 1971 founding, Patagonia Inc. has advocated a “be kind to Mother Nature” approach to the outdoors while selling colorful clothing for upscale mountain climbers, skiers, hikers and sailors.

Now the Ventura-based company has taken another step designed to win points with the increasing number of ecology-minded Americans. It has printed its oversize fall catalogue, set to drop into customers’ mailboxes later this month, on recycled paper.

“We didn’t know how to answer to our customers if we didn’t go to recycled paper,” said Kevin Sweeney, a Patagonia spokesman.

Patagonia joins a handful of direct marketers, most of them far outside the mainstream, that are being prodded by social consciousness or concerned customers to get into the environmental swing of things.

Among bigger companies considering a shift to recycled paper for catalogues are Eddie Bauer, L. L. Bean and Carter Hawley Hale Stores, the Los Angeles-based owner of the Broadway and the Emporium department store chains.

According to the Direct Marketing Assn., it took a spontaneous outpouring by customers after Earth Day, April 22, to get most catalogue companies moving. The message from customers was loud and clear: Cut down on the “junk mail” and the waste of trees or risk losing our business.

“Direct marketers are hearing what’s being said,” said Lisa Caugherty, a spokeswoman for the New York trade group.

Last year, the direct mail industry sent out 13.4 billion catalogues in the United States, or about 54 catalogues for every man, woman and child. The vast majority ended up on the nation’s already overloaded scrap heaps.

A few companies and organizations have begun addressing the concerns:

* Esprit de Corp. of San Francisco, which sells its trendy casual clothes in 49 stores but markets them in big, eye-catching catalogues, earlier this year began using recycled paper and is mailing out fewer copies of its catalogues for fall than it did for spring.

The company also has hired two people for an in-house “Eco-Desk” charged with educating employees and the public about ways to help the environment. Earlier this summer, Esprit placed a startling advertisement in the Utne Reader, a general-interest magazine, urging customers to “buy only what you need.”

* Gardener’s Supply Co. in Burlington, Vt., a company that promotes products for organic gardeners and mails 7 million catalogues a year, has devised what it calls a program for environmental responsibility. It includes funding for a catalogue-and-magazine recycling program in Burlington, backing for a nonprofit tree-replanting program in Costa Rica and development of a computer program that will make it easier to eliminate from rented mailing lists the names of customers who don’t want more catalogues. The company also is testing a recycled paper for its catalogue.

* Artventure, a small marketer of natural fiber clothing based in Berkeley, has used recycled paper in its catalogues for three years despite higher production costs and lower-quality reproduction, according to founder Tom Asher.

* The Direct Marketing Assn. in February formed a task force on environmental issues. It will study problems relating to recycling and packaging, among others.

Many catalogue companies say they have been looking into switching to recycled paper for years but have been stymied by the lack of options available from paper suppliers. Much of the recycled paper on the market is already spoken for, so that catalogue companies attempting to get on the bandwagon now could find it difficult.

The companies add that color photos of clothing and other products usually do not reproduce as well on the lower-quality recycled papers.

In its new catalogue, Patagonia explains the change to customers in a block of italic type over a photograph of rusted, abandoned fuel drums in the Antarctic Peninsula.

“This (catalogue) is printed on recycled paper. It’s not as slick as our former (catalogues); the clothes and the photographs may not look as clear and crisp as they have in the past. But when we translated the savings into real numbers we knew our customers would join us in a willingness to sacrifice some detail and clarity.”

To be sure, a sharp eye would notice a difference between the slightly muddier photos in the new catalogue and the crisp, sharp colors in glossier catalogues of the past. But the catalogue still has the familiar aura of faraway places and outdoorsy types, so it is doubtful that sales will suffer as a result.

Patagonia claims that the shift to recycled from virgin paper will save in one year 3.5 million kilowatt-hours of energy, 6 million gallons of water and 14,500 trees. Peggy Bernard, catalogue director for Patagonia, said the paper cost was roughly the same.

But even environmentally conscious catalogue companies are finding that there are no clear-cut answers.

Alan Newman, president of Seventh Generation, a 2 1/2-year-old company in Colchester, Vt., that sells solar flashlights, organic flea powders and other “ecologically correct” products, said recycled papers are not a panacea. A member of the Direct Marketing Assn.’s environmental task force, Newman said recycled papers generally must be bleached with chlorine, which produces toxins in the air and water.

“We would take virgin paper that has not been bleached with chlorine over recycled paper if we (were assured that the source forests) were being replenished,” he said.

THE DIRECT-MAIL DELUGE

Companies selling their wares through catalogues send out more and more pieces of mail each year, and shoppers respond, to the tune of $25 billion to $35 billion in purchases by mail or phone.

Estimated number of catalogues mailed in U.S., in billions

1980: 5.8 billion

1989: 13.4 billion