After a consumer downloaded our Green Office Guide, she mentioned that she had looked at the pricing on recycled paper and found it to be more expensive than Office Depot or Staples.
Our CEO provided the following response:
Office Depot and Staples are both $12-15 billion companies, doing more business in a single hour than Dolphin Blue does in a whole year. Both contribute greatly to the degradation of our planet by offering virgin-material products and products manufactured with no social nor environmental attributes in more than 90% of what they provide.
That being said, like in green-building, conventional (non-environmentally responsible) materials and products are heavily subsidized, not only on the resource harvesting/extraction side of the equation, but also on the energy consumption, pollution/emissions side of the equation as well. No subsidies exist for recycled or environmentally responsible products.
We're all paying the societal costs in loss of air quality, loss of fertile, productive soil and land, degradation of water quality, and, ultimately, higher costs for healthcare and healthcare premiums.
If our prices are higher than what you're looking at currently, then you might consider off-setting the higher cost with savings you'll realize from the purchase of remanufactured toner cartridges from Dolphin Blue.
Do you have a question for Thomas? Send questions to thomas@dolphinblue.com.