Print is still where it’s at

MYTHS DISPELLED: IT IS NEITHER DEAD NOR DYING; TO SUGGEST IT ISN’T ‘GREEN’ IS WRONG

It informs, entertains and connects, but at the same time, it helps us to unplug.

Using paper centres my world. It helps me process the craziness that is work, motherhood and life. With paper, I can make lists and plans. With paper, I can disconnect and escape into a book.

Although research the world over points to a resurgence of paper and print, from planners to paperbacks, the Paper Manufacturers

Association of South Africa (Pamsa) still has to counter the perceptions that print is dead (or dying), or that it’s not “green”; two issues that could not be further from the truth.

Print plays an ever-important role in a digitally minded society – it informs, entertains and connects, but at the same time, helps us to unplug.

Print is not dead.

It’s different.

In this age of digital-everything, print still has the power to reach people in a way that no other medium can. It’s tried and tested.

But print goes beyond marketing and media.

It has many purposes – some hidden in plain sight and many that we take for granted.

This week I had to buy medicine for my with a book – turning the pages – creates engagement.

While the internet has enabled us to share things on social media and instant messaging, it has also taken away that excitement of opening the postbox to find something other than just the electricity bill.

When I was a child, my parents used to receive Christmas cards by the dozen from friends and relatives abroad.

My mother would hang sticky tape from the cornice and create vertical garlands of cards depicting red-breasted robins and snowy yuletide scenes. Today, she’s lucky if she gets more than 20.

Why not send some holiday cards this year?

Remember to early though.

Digital communication is often “greenwashed” as better for the environment. “It saves trees.”

No it does not. In South Africa, paper, timber and cellulose products come from sustainably managed plantations.

Our country has 840 million trees planted over 693 000 hectares for the manufacture of pulp and paper products.

Trees are not “killed” to make paper – they are harvested and replanted.

With only a small portion harvested annually and then replanted in the same year, paper and wood products are a renewable resource.

Wood, and by extension paper, is a carbon storage mechanism – it locks up the carbon, absorbed as carbon dioxide by the tree.

The carbon would only be released if the paper decays or is incinerated.

Paper is also recyclable, and widely recycled around the world.

Scott Manson says in an article for the Publishing Research Council that print offers a more personal feel.

“There’s a feeling when you pick up a really well-produced print product that love and craftsmanship have gone into, and you can see and feel the production values.”

Print has tenacity.

It has survived for centuries and it is not going to die anytime soon.

Thank Gutenburg. post

Samantha Choles, Paper Manufacturers Association of South Africa.