More Quick-Print Businesses Boast a Feature Worth Copying : Local shops have added grades and colors of recycled paper, helping customers prevent tree-cutting.
Next time you go into a quick-copy shop to copy your resume or have your club or office printing done, request the use of recycled paper.
These days in Ventura County it’s easier than it used to be. In just one year, local shops have expanded customers’ choices of colors and grades of recycled paper, while lowering the prices to be competitive with printing on virgin stock.
Dave Stewart, owner of Quality Copy Service on Victoria Avenue in Ventura, said: “Supply is really picking up. Last year, I had 50 types of recycled stock to offer. This year, it’s over a hundred.”
“People should ask for it,” said Ray Jacob, owner of a Sir Speedy copy franchise in Simi Valley. He was referring to the little logo made up of arrows chasing themselves around that printers put on jobs involving recycled stock. In the trade, it’s called “the bug.”
When a customer gets it, he knows he is doing something to prevent tree-cutting and divert tons of waste paper away from the landfill--helping to shrink both the ozone hole and local government waste disposal expenses.
You might be thinking that a visit to a copy shop can’t really be much of an opportunity to save the planet or anything else. But it turns out that these shops are part of a $29-billion-a-year industry nationally, according to Jeff Hayzlett, a spokesman for the National Assn. of Quick Printers.
And these copy shops spent $300 million on supplies of recycled paper last year, Hayzlett said. But companies ordered it only when customers requested it.
Unfortunately, that $300 million was a fairly small percentage of the $3.3 billion spent by the industry on paper purchases.
The federal government, meanwhile, lavished between $300 million and $500 million (depending on whether you believe the Associated Press or the American Forest and Paper Assn., a trade organization) to buy all of its paper, very little of which had any recycled content. Most of that paper was also made by cutting down trees.
You are beginning to see how powerful you as the customer can be. The more recycled paper you ask for, the more you’ll get.
“When our customers say jump, we say how high,” said Hayzlett, concerning his 42,000-member association. Federal officaldom, on the other hand, is taking forever to embrace the use of recycled paper. And paper manufacturers themselves are uncomfortable about making too much of the stuff with higher than 10% of “post-consumer content,” paper that came from someone’s office waste basket and bypassed the landfill.
Meanwhile, according to Hayzlett, his industry’s customers are regularly using recycled paper with quite a planet-friendly percentage of post-consumer content.
Hayzlett singled out Kinko’s, a chain that happens to have its national headquarters in Ventura County, for being “on the cutting edge” of the retail sector’s conversion to environmentalism. The chain’s Ojai location, for instance, regularly provides copies on paper with 100% post-consumer content.
Locally, if you’re ready to switch, it’s a good idea to phone ahead to make sure a specific shop has recycled copying or printing papers on hand. Some are stocked to the rafters with it. Others will tell you it’s only available on special order. Some will charge extra, others won’t.
At all Kinko’s locations in Ventura County, the pro-recycled paper policy is automatic, according to spokeswoman Tammy Gentry. Whether you ask for it or not, they stock their self-service copy machines with recycled paper.
That’s also the case with some of the machines at the Alternative Copy Shop in Ventura. No extra charge at either company.
Details
* WHAT: Copying shops in Ventura County ready to do your work on paper with high percentage of recycled content
* WHERE: Kinko’s--for location nearest, call (800) 743-COPY; PIP Printing, 388-1101, 495-8415; Sir Speedy, 583-5100; Quality Copy Service, 642-1979; The Alternative Copy Shop, 658-1833; Copy Station Express Printing, 495-3630.
