Two Sides continues its fight against misleading environmental information on paper, and has just delivered the 2023 results of its Love Paper and Anti-Greenwash campaigns. Here are the highlights.
Love Paper reaches 240 million readers
Love Paper is a European mass-market communication campaign, launched in 2012, designed to explain the environmental performance of paper and printed products and improve their perception. In 2023, the campaign has been stepped up, with 2,100 Love Paper advertisements, compared with 1,850 in 2022, appearing in newspapers and magazines reaching over 240 million consumers.
Importantly too, Bauer Media Group, one of the world's leading media groups of German origin, is now using the Love Paper logo on its magazines to highlight their sustainability. Two Sides notes "growing interest from brands and agencies in using the Love Paper logo on their communications and paper packaging" and specifies that the number of publications represents "a milestone" for the Love Paper campaign.
75 European companies nabbed for greenwashing
Since the start of its Anti-Greenwash campaign in 2010, the association has stopped anti-paper messages from 730 European organizations (1,145 worldwide), but the greenwashing continues, much to Two Sides' dismay.
In Europe, messages such as "Go green, go paperless" or "Go online and save the trees", advocating the use of digital technology as being better for the environment, persist.
In 2023, Two Sides succeeded in having greenwashing messages removed from 75 European companies, compared with 108 in 2022. These included British Gas, B2 Mobility, Crédit Agricole, Hasting Direct, Intermarché, Scania...
Constantly updated tools
"Commitment to defending the environmental merits of printing, paper and paper-based packaging remains unwavering" says Jonathan Tame, Managing Director of Two Sides Europe. This means providing facts, information and research to support this commitment. Two Sides has therefore updated some of the tools and resources available to manufacturers, such as the Myths and facts and the information booklet on the packaging.
In 2023, new fact sheets were published: Learning with paper-based materials, Fabrics made from trees and the Single-use and reusable packaging fact sheet. An important fact sheet on print versus digital entitled Which is better: digital or print is due out shortly.
