We work with many US-based publishers who, unsurprisingly, use US printers who source their paper from US paper suppliers, using wood from US mills, which come from US forests. According to the American Forest & Paper Association, 90% of the wood that contributes to US paper comes from 10.6 million private forest owners, with 40% of that wood mass coming from leftover materials. Using leftover materials (offcuts) is a good thing; waste not, want not. The problem with using offcuts is that it can become practically impossible to know which bits of wood came from where, which means that the offcut wood isn’t compliant and thus can’t be used. Not only does this discourage mills from using discarded wood (which is more wasteful and will increase the number of trees being cut down), it will also drive-up costs for consumers; paper mills will be forced to use more ‘virgin’ wood which can be traced, increasing costs which are passed onto printers buying the paper, who pass it onto publishers, who pass it on to European consumers. To quote one of my favorite films, “this, to me, might be considered kind of a step backwards, wouldn’t you say?”
Using offcuts is a good thing — but the new regulations discourage mills from using discarded wood because it is impossible to know which bits of wood came from where
The regulation is also blatantly protectionist. For example, whilst the EU will accept books printed in Europe during the phasing-in stage (between June 2023 and December 2025) because the printers will be complying with existing regulation (EUTR: EU Timber Regulation), the EU will not accept books printed in the UK, despite the fact that the printers will be complying with the UKTR (UK Timber Regulation), which is essentially a copy/paste version of the EUTR that the UK implemented after Brexit.
So what about books printed during the phasing-in stage that aren’t compliant (because we can’t get the historical location data)? Tough!, says the EU. Throw those books in the waste paper bin, they’re now illegal! My colleagues and I (at Mare Nostrum Group) have looked into this on behalf of over 130 academic, professional, and society publishers. For this group alone, we estimate there are over 100,000 units in stock in the UK that won’t be compliant because the information required by the EU doesn’t exist. That’s a lot of books to pulp (destroy). And those publishers are not, by any stretch of the imagination, the only ones in this situation. {read}