Our "Not So Raw" Materials

What we make Naked Binders out of, and what it means to you.


How much more environmentally friendly is recycled paper compared to virgin paper?

• Recycled paper saves 60% energy vs. virgin paper¹
• Recycled paper generates 95% less air pollution: each ton saves 60 lbs. of air pollution ¹
• Recycling of each ton of paper saves 17 trees and 7000 gallons of water ²

Every year enough paper is thrown away to make a 12-foot high wall running from New York to California

¹  Center for Ecological Technology
²  EPA

According to these numbers, Naked Binder has currently saved:

     • 663 trees      • 293,000 gallons of water        • 2340 lbs of air pollution  

Our Materials

Board

Naked Binder uses FSC certified 100% post consumer waste binders board.  This unbleached board is created from household and office curbside waste.  When the binder is finished, it is 100% recyclable. To show how strong this is we tested a binder to 250,000 flexes without fail and ran them through a dishwasher.

Book Binding Cloth

A durable library-grade 100% cotton book binding clorth which adds protection and color to your binder.  This is the same cloth as all of the books on you bookshelfs

Papers

Naked Binder uses three different papers.

For the Classic Binder we use the FSC certified Ecological Fibers Rainbow series papers. These papers are acid free, carbon free, lignin free and archival. The facilities which makes them only discharges clean process water, recovers coating waste materials which are recycled into an ingredient in potting soil, uses recyclclable scrap paper to manufacture new raw materials and converts non-recyclable waste to energy through incineration.

The Wrapped Binder uses Neenah Eames paper in the graphic grey.  Neenah Eames papers are Green Seal certified, meaning they are at least 30% post consumer fiber and that mill processes, including packaging, are environmentally preferable. Green-e identifies products made with certified renewable energy, including but not limited to wind power, solar power, low impact hydropower, and biomass.

The interior of the Wrapped Binder is lined with acid-free book end paper from an FSC- Certified mill. This is the same end paper that the Library of Congress specifies to protect their bound volumes.  If you have old paperbacks or newspaper that has yellowed and decayed, you have seen what acidic paper can do.  An archival acid-free paper will protect your contents and also lasts much, much longer than other papers.

Our decision was to go with the acid-free paper over a recycled content paper at this time.  If we can find a paper that has both attributes and works well when we flex the spine, we will gladly switch. This is on the list of things we are working towards.

Rings

We use stainless steel binder binder rings, In the 2" and 2.5" rings we use EZD rings, the best rings you can get so the ring holds under the weight of 400-500 sheets of paper. To our knowledge, the rings of the Naked Binder are not recycled.  They are made in China (there are no US manufacturers) and are metal, which means they could be recycled metal, but we honestly just don’t know.  At this time, no one makes a binder ring that is certifiably recycled.

A few comments on terms

Post-Consumer Waste vs. Recycled Content
Post-consumer waste is basically the garbage left after an end product has been used.  This waste was not generated to create a new product, but is, for example, a newspaper after it has been read.

Recycled Content can include waste from the creation of a product as well as post-consumer waste.  In the case of the board manufacturer, some of the board can be used – perhaps it is not set properly or has a defect.  This can easily be put back into the recycling stream to be remade into usable board.  Therefore the board is not 100% post-consumer waste anymore.

The only way to have a 100% post-consumer board would be for a manufacturer not to reuse their own waste. Hmmm…

FSC-Certified
The Forest Stewardship Council was created to change the dialogue about and the practice of sustainable forestry worldwide. The FSC standards represent the world’s strongest system for guiding forest management toward sustainable outcomes.

For those companies who manufacture or trade certified products, a different form of certification applies. Again, to assure the credibility of claims on products, it is important to track materials as they leave the forest and become products down stream. This “chain of custody”(COC) certification process is quite simple. Like any inventory control system, COC allows products to be segregated and identified as having come from a particular source—in this case, an FSC-certified forest.

Green-e certification
Green-e is the nation's leading independent consumer protection program for the sale of renewable energy and greenhouse gas reductions in the retail market. Green-e offers certification and verification of renewable energy and greenhouse gas mitigation products. It is a program of the Center for Resource Solutions.


Green Seal certification
Green Seal is an independent non-profit organization dedicated to safeguarding the environment and transforming the marketplace by promoting the manufacture, purchase, and use of environmentally responsible products and services.

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