Smock Paper Offers First Bamboo Stationary Line
by Kristin Underwood, Sacramento, CA 
on 08.12.08
Image source: Smock Paper
Smock Paper is the first company in the US to offer "printing on luxury bamboo paper." For those of you hosting a party, getting married or just looking for something different to write home to mom on, Smock Paper offers an alternative paper made on fast-growing and pesticide free bamboo. Smock offers a product that harks back to an earlier era when artisans took care, time and attention to detail to make a good product. While the paper is made in a european mill, the paper is printed and pressed in their workshop in Syracuse, NY and this is where the magic happens.
Smock paper is letterpressed at a 500 year old European mill on bamboo paper and inspired by Amy Graham Stigler, which some of you may know from Snow & Graham. The designs all have a very simple, clean, classic look, with soft color patterns.
Bamboo grows very fast, requires no pesticides, and very little water during production. When pressed, the paper has a very soft feel to it, making it feel fancier than plain paper stationary. Smock Paper is pretty excited about the benefits of bamboo such as it's ability to detoxify wastewater and its natural anti-fungal and anti-bacterial properties.
The inks used on the paper are all vegetable-based and low-VOC inks, and all aspects of the print-making process that can be recycled are. The keepsake boxes are made in the shop from 100% recycled materials.
Smock Paper is powered by wind energy and is a member of 1% For The Planet, donating 1% of profits to environmental causes working to protect the planet. All packaging is tree-free, petroleum free and certified biodegradable. They also offer customers the option of a tree-planting with their order and work with American Forests. They even have a one, three and five year environmental plan, which you can read online.
Smock Paper also looks after its employees by subsidizing 20 week Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) memberships, as well as subsidized bus passes. Smock Paper is also a member of Co-op America's Green Business Network.
You can find Smock paper online or in their store in Syracuse, NY and coming soon to paper stores around the US.
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Update from Smock Paper: The bamboo for Smock paper is sources in Thailand and is not currently FSC-certified as there are very few companies with this certification, though Smock Paper is working on purchasing from one of these sources. The currently bamboo stock is confirmed to be non-GMO, not illegally harvested, and not produced in areas where traditional or civil rights are violated. The bamboo is harvested by local farmers and is not taken from natural forests that have been turned into plantation or non-forest use.
More Resources on Bamboo
Bamboosa: Bamboo Fiber Clothing
China's Panda Poo To Make Paper
Bamboo Everything
Pop Quiz: What's Bamboo For?
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It's interesting to watch Treehugger rave about this while panning Wasara paper plates (Treehugger article linked from my name). I do value a diversity of opinions here, and I recognize that this and Wasara are different products. Washable ceramic wedding invitations probably aren't a good plan. But Treehugger might wish to moderate the certainty of their judgements.
The only thing GREEN about Bamboo for the US market is its color. Due to a booming market in China they are clearcutting hardwood forests, eliminating biodiversity and even spreading copius amounts of fertilizer on an already fast growing plant just to squeeze a little bit more time out of the growth cycle. And growing it in the US - introducing an exotic fast growing species - is akin to asking 100 years ago "should we introduce Kudzu or Eucalyptus trees to the US?" Exotic species are exotic species. Read more about it - and independent scientific study on bamboo growing techniques in China - on my blog at www.eco-panels.com.
I really appreciated this post. I have family all over Syracuse, and am thrilled to hear more about green initiatives coming from the city. See
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/11/green_hotel_solar_facade.php
for another example.
I am not heading towards marriage yet, but will definitely consider looking at their sustainable products for other paper needs.
I hope you got paid to run that "article."
please tell me exactly WHAT is sustainable about purposely growing and harvesting virgin bamboo in asia, pulping it with a ton of chemicals to break down the fiber, shipping it to europe to be milled and then onto a factory in new york where it's printed? there are plenty of greener paper resources to be had in the US. this paper is the perfect solution to the problem that never existed.
smock is pure green alright, GREENWASH.
I'm writing from Boxcar Press, the parent company of Smock Paper, because charges of "greenwashing" overlook the deep commitment our company has to the environment. Bamboo paper is not our only green innovation, as this year we also pioneered a recycling program for printing plates that previously ended up in the dump--and we're subsidizing this program for the 1,000 other letterpress print shops we work with across the country. We've planted over 3,000 trees via American Forests in 2008 through mid-August, we've given 1% of sales to environmental charities, and we are part of the Coop of America Green Business Network. We do things like subsidize organic produce for our employees, so that local organic food can be more affordable for them. All printing is done with wind energy. And we're constantly working to be better -- we just completed a rigorous sustainability audit with a Syracuse University Whitman School of Management professor to find ways that we can become even more environmental in our business practices. We report our progress toward our 1, 3 and 5 year environmental goals annually. I hope you can see that we're not "greenwashing" because our commitment to the environment goes more than skin deep.
Why bamboo? Bamboo paper is just the latest in our efforts to become a more sustainable print shop, by eliminating our dependence on fibers that use pesticides. In truth our first choice for this paper was organic cotton, because this is grown domestically and fit our criteria of 1) no pesticides during cultivation, 2) non-GMO, and 3) minimal ecological impact. Unfortunately, there are not enough cotton linters in the world to make organic cotton paper at the moment. Bamboo fits all these requirements, and no other (domestic) pulp fit the bill. Our bamboo pulp uses fewer chemicals than other papers because our mill only uses Totally Chlorine Free pulp--a standard not held by most US paper mills. Nor does any domestic paper mill have the skills or equipment to make our mouldmade paper (there are no cylinder papermaking machines in operation in the U.S.). The nature of our paper requires us to transport our product around the globe, but we primarily use sea freight (low carbon emissions per pound), and we are doing whatever we can to reduce our energy usage and our carbon emissions from our wind-powered print shop.
We're an extremely small print shop (just 20 people), but we believe businesses of any size business have the power to help the environment. We hope that our way of thinking--trying to print with minimal environmental impact--encourages larger, more established printers to lobby for more sustainable domestic paper. We hope that some day we'll see domestically grown organic cotton paper become feasible--and of course we hope to be the ones announcing its introduction here.