KEY POINTS:
Recycling logos on paper products can be misleading, says New Zealand's biggest supplier of tissue products.
SCA Hygiene's national sales manager, Mark Stevens, said the recycle mark was one of the most misunderstood consumer icons.
Mr Stevens said some products were designated as being recycled when that applied to only a small percentage of the material.
In one case a city council in New Zealand had ordered what it thought was recycled paper, but only 20 per cent was recycled and tests revealed the rest was made from Indonesian hardwood.
Mr Stevens said that in many cases, tissue paper was bleached with chlorine when there were more environmentally friendly methods, such as using hydrogen peroxide, for bleaching.
He said New Zealand did not have a big enough population to provide enough quality office waste paper for recycling into tissue products, so they were instead made from pine plantation leftovers.
"There is a misconception that we cut down trees to make the paper but it is produced from forest waste like tree trimmings."
Mr Stevens said the material came from legally harvested and certified forests, so it was a renewable and sustainable source.
But he accepted paper-related goods left a large environmental footprint because, for instance, the amount of electricity and water used in their manufacture.
Mr Stevens said SCA Hygiene, which makes toilet paper, face tissues and paper towels, had carried on being a leader in environmental standards since it took over Carter Holt Harvey Tissue.
The company had devised 10 considerations approved by independent experts, Government agencies, academics and the scientific community to help people see how green paper products were.
Advertising Standards Authority executive director Hilary Souter said a code of ethics on environmental claims ensured they were not misleading.
But the code was to be reviewed this year as products had moved on from being described as environmentally friendly to newer terms such as carbon neutral.
Ms Souter said that if a product misrepresented itself as 100 per cent recycled, there would also be issues under fair trading legislation and of company credibility.
