When Jeff Mendelsohn was in college in New York, he was something of an environmental activist, and never expected he’d work for a business, much less run one. Just over a decade later he is the head of an environmentally-responsible paper company with sales that doubled last year to $15 million.

Jeff remembers considering his post-collegiate options. “The academic world seemed too insular and the nonprofit world seemed like beating on an elephant with a toothbrush. So I intuitively came to the conclusion that there was a huge amount of power invested in the corporations themselves, and why not be a different type of corporation.”

Why paper? “I wanted to take on one of the most polluting industries in the world,” says Jeff. “I love the wilderness and working on paper has an immediate impact.” In the early 90s, some large paper companies offered recycled paper, but none made it the focus of their business. So Jeff started an environmentally-sound paper and printing company in New York City.

“It’s very hard to break into the paper business. The relationships between manufacturers and distributors are pretty set. I made a sort of naïve jump into the world of business.” Providing both paper and printing service made sense at the start because customers were often apprehensive about the print quality of recycled paper. “To win customers, we said, ‘If you don’t like it, you don’t pay for it. Don’t worry about the print quality, we’ll take care of that.’”

“But the print business was not my goal and I didn’t want to become the best environmental printer in the country. I wanted to focus on producing the best environmental paper.”

After seven years in New York, Jeff moved the business to San Francisco. “I wanted to be here, and I felt it was the right place for the company. I felt it was the most progressive large city in the country.” New Leaf Paper was founded in San Francisco in June of 1998 with the goal of becoming the leading national source for environmentally responsible paper.

“We’re a very unique company. We are essentially a distributor, but most distributors simply sell standard mill brand product and mills normally do all the branding and marketing. New Leaf does all the branding, all the marketing, and all the specification of our products, as well as distribution. So we take on a lot.”

Working closely with mills has been, “a very interesting and a sort of dynamic process,” says Jeff. “In the early 90s, paper companies were doing well and it was still an old boy network. It was pretty much impossible to talk to mills directly. They had no interest in rocking the boat with their established distribution.”

But Jeff’s perseverance paid off. “Everything shifted in the late 90s due to the knowledge base and the legitimacy that we’d established as a company. Plus there was a downturn in the paper industry.” Jeff now works directly with mill engineers to develop specifications for all of New Leaf’s 15 paper lines.

New Leaf develops mostly white papers, and creates product lines that look like any other paper. The difference is in the ingredients. There is a hierarchy of preferred fibers that New Leaf clearly articulates, based on environmental impact. Post-consumer waste is at the top of the list, followed by agricultural by-products, which include cereal straws and corn stalks that are otherwise burned or flooded from fields. Pre-consumer waste is third on the list, including unsold magazines and mill scraps. Sustainably harvested virgin fiber is last on the list, including Forest Stewardship Council certified wood and non-wood sources such as hemp and kenaf.

There have been some compromises. “It was very tough the first time I sold paper with 30% post consumer content. It felt awkward, because I thought, ‘It’s not 100%. What’s wrong here?’ But I realized that I could be a marginal company and get a tiny fraction of the business out there or I could offer a broader product range and have a bigger impact. In certain product lines there actually are some physical limitations to the amount of recycled content you can put in there, so we just do the best we can to be the most environmentally friendly. That’s my rule of thumb.”

Most of New Leaf’s papers are processed without chlorine. Their web page provides a helpful glossary of dozens of paper processing terms, defining pre- and post-consumer waste, and explaining why processed chlorine free is better than totally chlorine free (the latter term is only used for paper made from virgin fibers). New Leaf also provides customers with an eco-audit illustrating the minimized impact of purchasing their paper. “We have a very effective tool that communicates the relative resource use of our paper versus virgin paper. And not only resource use, but we show a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, pollutants, water use, electricity use, and landfill space.”

“New Leaf Paper is a very ambitious business. Because we’re in such a competitive industry, we have to have significant volume. And some of these product lines have 30 different individual products within one product line. So it is a lot to do, to develop a product, create the brand, do the marketing, and generate all the demand. It’s a challenge,” acknowledges Jeff.

“The other big challenge is the mixed blessing of having absolutely limitless prospect pool. Everybody uses paper. We invest a lot in providing information to prospective customers, so we have to be very smart about who we choose to go after. It’s actually a very broad cross-section of businesses. Clearly, we go after those companies that already show some environmental values, but our biggest customers are ones that don’t have that reputation.”

Current customers include Apple Computer, Gap and Old Navy, and Bank of America, as well as World Wildlife Fund, Patagonia, and the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We develop strong relationships with our customers. The more traditional kind of arms length sales relationship is more difficult because there’s less information sharing.” New Leaf unconditionally guarantees their paper will measure up to the quality standards of comparable, less environmentally sound papers.

New Leaf doesn’t intend to remain a niche market. It hopes to “inspire, through success, a fundamental shift toward environmental responsibility throughout the paper industry.” To do that effectively, Jeff says, “The paper has to work well for the customers and it has to push the envelope in the industry, in terms of the best environmental product.”

New Leaf can only make its recycled paper at mills that have certain site characteristics, and in recent years, many of those have shut down due to consolidation in the industry. “It’s been a huge challenge when mills shut down, because we invest a lot. We’ve been able to find other manufacturers that are able to do everything we were doing at the previous mills. It’s just a frustrating and very costly process.”

Jeff doesn’t rule out getting into the mill business at some point in the future. “Our belief is that either New Leaf or a like-minded company needs to start investing in infrastructure. Our fundamental message to our customers and to the industry is that mill design has to change.”

Jeff is happy that he has been able to build a business that is compatible with his values. “I wouldn’t be anywhere near the business world if I were not able to do that. One thing that New Leaf enjoys is that we’re very well respected by everyone from hard line activists to big corporations.”

“Every transaction does something good for the environment. And it does something good for the paper industry.”

Contact
New Leaf Paper
Jeff Mendelsohn, CEO
215 Leidesdorff Street,
4th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94111
415.291.9210
www.newleafpaper.com