Stopping by the supermarket today, I discovered something unusual: an environmentally-preferable product that costs less and performs as well as its competitors.
Marcal Small Steps paper towels are not only made entirely from recycled paper. They sell for less – in some instances quite a bit less – than paper towels made mostly from trees by the industry giants.
Greener and cheaper
Here’s how the consumer’s choices look, measured from cheapest to most expensive, in terms of dollars per 100 paper towels:
Marcal $1.64
Bounty (Procter & Gamble) $1.79
Giant (store brand) $1.85
Brawny (Georgia-Pacific) 2.04, on sale
Viva (Kimberly-Clark) $2.17
This is, of course, not the way things usually work. Solar power costs more than electricity made from coal. Organic food is pricier than conventional. You pay more for Starbucks’ coffee than you do for Dunkin’ Donuts. Partly that’s because the price consumers pay for conventional fare doesn’t reflect the full cost of the product. (See, for example, Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food, Bryan Walsh’s recent Time magazine cover story, about the hidden costs of industrial agriculture.)
To say that I “discovered” Marcal isn’t precisely true. After I covered Greenpeace’s recent agreement with forest-products giants Kimberly-Clark, a PR woman asked me to look at the company. So I got on the phone with Tim Spring, Marcal’s CEO, who told me a little about Marcal and its history.
“This company was committed to saving trees for two decades before Greenpeace bought its first boat,” Spring said.
It turns out that Marcal, a 77-year-old maker of paper towels, napkins, toilet tissue and other consumer goods, has been using recycled stock since the 1950s. Based in suburban Elmwood Park, New Jersey, its paper-making factory employs about 900 people and draws much of its stock from those blue plastic recycling bins under office desks in Manhattan skyscrapers about 20 miles away.
“Every time I look at that skyline,” Spring says, “I see a big urban forest. I’ve got access to unlimited supplies of paper.”
Marcal, he says, is a little like the electric car—ahead of its time. “It almost, horribly, went off the face of the earth a couple of years ago.”
In fact, the family owned firm went bankrupt in 2006, in part because its environmental history isn’t exactly pristine. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency filed a claim of $945 million against Marcal over alleged pollution of the Passaic River, a claim that was disputed and later settled by the company. In any event, Marcal emerged from bankruptcy in 2008 under new owners, Highland Capital Management, an investment firm based in Dallas.
Spring, who is 47, was named CEO. He previously led a turnaround at Vlasic pickles and oversaw such consumer brands as French’s and Log Cabin. (Now he’s mopping up the mustard and maple syrup spills.) A longtime backpacker, he was eager to try his hand at green marketing.
“America is hungry for simple ways to be green,” he says.
Marcal is certainly pushing a green message. Its packaging says, among other things “A Small, Easy Step to a Greener Earth,” “Help Us Save 1 Million Trees,” “100% Premium Recycled Paper,” “Whitened without Chlorine Bleaching,” “No Dye or Fragrance Added,” “Right for the Environment” “Safe for your home,” and “paper from paper, not from trees.”
If consumers don’t get it, they’re not paying attention.
Tim Spring
Spring says the company’s goal is to appeal to mainstream buyers who want to be environmentally responsible without sacrificing anything in terms of price or performance. As he puts it:
We’re not talking to deep green user. We’re talking to mainstream America, the soccer moms. What they are saying is, is there any way we can be green without having to compromise?
I can’t speak to the performance of the Small Steps paper towels. Other forest products companies claim they can’t achieve maximum softness and absorbency without using virgin pulp, i.e., chopping down trees.
Spring differs: “The big guys are spending over $350 million a year promoting this concept of soft, and they’ve been doing it for the past 10 years. Everybody talks soft.” But many if not most commercial buyers of tissues and toilet paper purchase 100% recycled product and most consumers who use those products in hotels, schools or hospitals don’t notice any difference. Spring won’t say his products are better than others but he will say they “perform about as well” and at a lower price.
Recently, my friend Joel Makower, the executive editor of Greenbiz.com (where I’m a senior writer) wrote a column asking “Why Doesn’t Green = Better?” Joel, who knows as much as anyone about the green economy, argued that not enough green products are better (i.e., cheaper, more innovative, easier to use, healthier, more convenient, etc) than their competition. Joel wrote:
Until “green” is synonymous with “better,” it’s destined to remain marginalized, incapable of fomenting change at the scale and speed necessary to address climate change and other pressing problems.
Marcal, it seems to me, is taking a small step towards “better.” You can listen to a podcast I did with Tim Spring at Greenbiz.com.
Hi Marc,
In your interview with Tim Spring I don’t see the answer to one key question.
It’s fine to use recycled paper, but you have to ask what % is post-consumer. Seventh Generation and Green Forest have on their packaging that percent and it is critical – otherwise it could be post-industrial scrap aka pre-consumer recycled paper. Tim does talk about how his paper comes from recycling programs which is good, but we need to get everybody to use the same consistent language in their marketing claims or else the public is going to be subjected to green washing.
Please let me know.
Thanks, Peter
Peter, this is an excellent question, and one I should have asked Tim Spring but did not.
According to Greenpeace’s guide to tissues, Marcal only uses 30% post-consumer recycled paper. I don’t know whether that is the current figure, but it would suggest that you are right, that Marcal falls behind Seventh Generation and Green Forest. Post-industrial scrap is still better than virgin trees but not as good as post-consumer stock because it does not help the economics of the recycling industry, as I understand it. Thanks for your comment and here’s a link to the Greenpeace guide: http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/campaigns/forests/tissueguide
Marcal is the biggest air and water polluter in the state of NJ. How can Tim Spring claim his company is eco-friendly? The EPA has sued them for billions.
All of us at Marcal welcome valid criticism and open discussion on blogs (and everywhere), but we want you to know that “Nick” leaves comments like the one here anytime he or she sees something written about us…and leaves them anonymously or from a variety of different names, so there is no way we can get in touch and set the facts straight. The phrases used are always very similar, the kind of pattern that almost shouts, ”spam campaign.” This kind of nameless attack isn’t in the open spirit of blogs, and we think it’s a disservice to readers and to our hard-earned reputation. The simple fact is that we make our products in a manufacturing system designed to minimize our environmental impact.
We invite the person making these attacks to come pay us a visit; we have noting to hide! We think our actions speak for themselves; otherwise, why would a group like the NRDC cite our factory in a discussion of companies leading the way environmentally in the New York metro area? (http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/egoldstein/green_apples_and_bad_apples_nr.html).
Marcal didn’t recently “paint itself green.” We’ve been using recycled paper since 1950, long before green was in. As for the lawsuit, it was settled with no admission of wrong doing, enabling the company to emerge from bankruptcy to protect and grow jobs under a new owner and management team that understands that, if you are going to market yourself as green, you better do things right.
Are we perfect? Of course not, but we are always striving to be better. We invite anyone with questions about our practices to contact us at ecofacts@marcal.com
If Marcal is so concerned about the environment, why don’t they:
1) Tell us how to use less paper. There are many ways. Cloth napkins, hanky’s and towels all make much more eco-sense. You can use discarded clothes, and be much more green
2) Stop shipping product made in NJ, across the US. That would make a much bigger environmental impact.
3) Clean the river next to their plant, that they have polluted for 50 years and destroyed. Why not clean that up, with their illicit, false green claims to make profits? You can’t walk away from your past. Even though they are trying. Try and really be green, not pretend to be green.
And a good PR campaign can win many awards. But facts, when properly examined, speak for themselves. If you think Marcal is eco-friendly, you have not done your homework.
All good points, Sandy. There is no such thing as a “green” paper company. That is impossible – they destroy everything around them, whether they recycle or not. It is purely a marketing ploy. And insulting for them to claim to be “green”.
Marcal recycles because it is cheaper to do so. So the way to sell an inferior product, but still make money, is to convince the consumer they are helping the environment by using their product. Even though that is a bold faced lie.
Marcal has contributed to massive air and water pollution, and continues to do so. But they are eco- friendly? That is tough for me to believe.
This is a plain and simple marketing ploy. They could care less about the environment, and all their actions show it. Anyone who buys into that message is a fool, and doing a disservice to those who really care about the environment, and our children. Take the time and look it up. The answer is to use less paper. Paper towels, napkins and facial tissues are all easily replaced. For toilet paper, buy a bidet. But don’t buy into Marcals lies about them being “green”. That is an out and out lie.