Overall Rating Silver
Overall Score 55.74
Liaison Kristyn Achilich
Submission Date May 11, 2021

STARS v2.2

Saint Michael's College
OP-14: Office Paper Purchasing

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 0.02 / 1.00 Karen Talentino
Professor of Biology
Biology
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Total annual expenditures on office paper:
7,085 US/Canadian $

Expenditures on office paper with the following levels of post-consumer recycled, agricultural residue, and/or FSC certified content::
Expenditure Per Level
10-29 percent 0 US/Canadian $
30-49 percent 0 US/Canadian $
50-69 percent 0 US/Canadian $
70-89 percent (or FSC Mix label) 0 US/Canadian $
90-100 percent (or FSC Recycled/100% label) 160 US/Canadian $

A brief description of the time period from which the figures reported above are drawn:

July 1, 2018 to June 30, 2019


Website URL where information about the institution’s paper purchasing is available:
---

Additional documentation to support the submission:
---

Data source(s) and notes about the submission:

Data reported from the Office of Finance.
Important note on sustainability issues related to paper purchases: First, it should be noted that we reduced our paper purchases in our performance year by over 50% since our baseline year; this figure is currently even lower as we shift to being all online.
In terms of choosing post-consumer paper, we had many difficult discussions about this issue, looking at sustainability goals as well as the importance of supporting local and regional economies: The college looked into buying post-consumer paper for two printing aspects, in-house printing (Marketing, Advancement, etc.) and the copier fleet. The sheets used for in-house printing tend to be 70-120 lb text and cover. A decision was made to support northeastern paper mills who replace their trees annually, and buy sheets such as Accent Opaque which is a virgin sheet and milled at the Ticonderoga Plant and supports many Addison County, VT jobs rather than pay premium prices for recycled content being trucked from other parts of the country, which would increase the footprint for this type of paper.
For the 20lb bond used in the MFP fleet, the cost associated with post-consumer content was always more than double what we could purchase by the pallet load at $24-27 per case. The few cases we purchased of recycled paper at ($58-66) did not perform well in our Ricoh devices at the time, making the decision an easy one. As well all know, decisions must be well-considered, and all factors must be taken into consideration. We believed that supporting local and regional sustainable paper producers who were making better quality paper (especially for marketing purposes) was the better choice than recycled paper that did not perform well and was trucked in from further away.


Data reported from the Office of Finance.
Important note on sustainability issues related to paper purchases: First, it should be noted that we reduced our paper purchases in our performance year by over 50% since our baseline year; this figure is currently even lower as we shift to being all online.
In terms of choosing post-consumer paper, we had many difficult discussions about this issue, looking at sustainability goals as well as the importance of supporting local and regional economies: The college looked into buying post-consumer paper for two printing aspects, in-house printing (Marketing, Advancement, etc.) and the copier fleet. The sheets used for in-house printing tend to be 70-120 lb text and cover. A decision was made to support northeastern paper mills who replace their trees annually, and buy sheets such as Accent Opaque which is a virgin sheet and milled at the Ticonderoga Plant and supports many Addison County, VT jobs rather than pay premium prices for recycled content being trucked from other parts of the country, which would increase the footprint for this type of paper.
For the 20lb bond used in the MFP fleet, the cost associated with post-consumer content was always more than double what we could purchase by the pallet load at $24-27 per case. The few cases we purchased of recycled paper at ($58-66) did not perform well in our Ricoh devices at the time, making the decision an easy one. As well all know, decisions must be well-considered, and all factors must be taken into consideration. We believed that supporting local and regional sustainable paper producers who were making better quality paper (especially for marketing purposes) was the better choice than recycled paper that did not perform well and was trucked in from further away.

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