August 20th, 2007 - Local paper products?
A while back, I wondered whether I should buy locally produced paper products or 7th Generation ones. So I wrote to 7th Gen to see if any of their’s were made local to me (since I live in the paper products capital of the US, I think–this area produces so much of the nation’s paper products that we’re on a top list of places to be hit by a nuclear attack. Or at least we used to be. Do they still keep such lists?).
I thought you might be interested in their response (which I did get promptly, I just didn’t do anything with it and then today I thought of sharing it! Plus having it here means I can easily find the info back if I want to):
Thank you for writing! Our paper products are made in 3 places - for the Eastern Part of the States, most of the paper is made in Quebec, Canada. For the west, it is made mostly in Arizona.
The exception is the brown single roll paper towels, the brown napkins, and the facial tissue. All of the facial tissue is made in WI, as are the brown paper napkins. The Parent roll for the single roll paper towels is made in WI, but then sent to AZ or NY to sister factories to be cut into paper towels for the East or the West. I cannot divulge the names of our manufacturers for proprietary reasons - only locations…
Our QA person tells me that buying locally in a sense may not even be possible the way you are thinking, because most likely our products are shipped out of the state to distributors and then shipped back in to retailers who order from the distributors. The distributors are regionally located - they are not in every state.
Hope that is helpful to you - let me know if you have other questions…. best wishes to you on your venture - it is a good one, and sometimes complicated to figure it all out, eh?