HOW NEWSPAPERS POLLUTE

The newspaper industry has always been a polluter, but not on the scale of heavy industry. That's why the Environmental Protection Agency has been slow to turn its attention to newspaper publishing. Now that the EPA is looking at newspapers, they are scrambling to abide by (or in some cases evade) the same laws they used to deal with only in their news columns -- the clean air, clean water, and hazardous and solid waste statutes.

"Newspapers are not large polluters, but they are real polluters," says Jamie Deuel, an environmental consultant who has worked for a number of major manufacturers and newspapers. Among the challenges newspaper face are:

* How to comply with Clean Air Act regulations addressing chemical vapors called volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which enter the air from inks and cleaning solvents and in sunlight produce ozone, a lung irritant and a major component of smog.

* How to store and then dispose of inks and solvents, which can be hazardous wastes.

* How to obtain and use more recycled newsprint, to take the pressure off overflowing landfills.

How are newspapers dealing with these issues?

Clean Air

When Congress amended the Clean Air Act in late 1990, it gave the EPA power to scrutinize previously unregulated industries, including newspapers. After determining that the offset printing industry as a whole is responsible for 1.48 million tons of air pollutants yearly, the EPA was prepared to define most dailies as "major" pollutants -- a regulatory classification that would have mandated technological changes, more paperwork, and more scrutiny.

The industry lobbied hard against the classification, contending that newsprint absorbs 95 percent of VOCs in ink so they never reach the atmosphere. Environmental groups have not yet focused on the issue, and last October the EPA tentatively accepted the industry's 95 percent figure. As a result, regulations on ink expected to be issued by summer's end will affect only the biggest dailies. Still, because the states enforce federal clean-air laws, some areas may get tougher local standards that could include smaller newspapers.

Meanwhile, newspapers have been working with manufacturers of inks and solvents to develop less harmful products, such as soy-based inks and citrus-baed cleaning solutions.

Hazardous Waste

Newspaper cleaning solvents, typically petroleum products, are considered by the EPA to be a hazardous waste. The agency has tended to concern itself with businesses that produce more than 1,000 kilograms (about 2,200 pounds) a month of any listed hazardous waste. Environmental consultant Deuel says that most newspapers he saw over the years generated less, and assumed they were off the regulatory hook. But by law, he says, all newspapers must determine whether they produce hazardous wastes, dispose of them properly, and document everything. However, many papers "tend to let it ride."

"What I found was, where there was compliance, it was thin, if not superficial," he says. For example, at one metropolitan newspaper Deuel found a storage yard full of fifty-five gallon drums filled with hazardous waste -- four years after the regulations prohibited such an accumulation. At another newspaper, hazardous wastes were migrating toward the water table from underground tanks. The company ordered a cleanup, and kept it quiet, Deuel says.

Solid Waste

Congress is presently overhauling the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and some lawmakers want to set a minimum for recycled paper content -- 40 percent has been mentioned. But the Newspaper Association of America is lobbying intensely to have no set standard, just a general goal of using more recycled paper in order to keep old papers out of the nation's dumps.

Demand for recycled newsprint exceeds supply. Paper mills are increasing production capacity as quickly as possible, from 811,000 metric tons of recycled newsprint in 1981 to a projected 3.88 million in 1993, according to Wilson Cunningham, vice-president for technology research at the Newspaper Association of America.

Complying with environmental regulations, meanwhile, can be a struggle for even the most environmentally conscious company. Newspapers, like other industries, must contend with proliferating local, state, and federal laws and regulations, all so recent that at many newspapers the compliance officer is a new hire. "The biggest regulatory headache is probably the permitting process itself," says Donald Ayan, air quality management district coordinator for the Los Angeles Times. "You get bogged down in paperwork."

The Times faces rigorous state and local laws along with federal regulation, and it has made a lot of progress on the environmental front. Recycled paper content averages 44 percent. Since 1987, Ayan says, it has reduced VOC content in inks from about 20 percent to 2 percent by shifting entirely to soy-based inks. Hazardous waste amounts to "a little bit of solvent and residue," Ayan says, because the Times reclaims ink.

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