Going Green

Pull up behind a dark blue pickup and wait while the driver gets out to unlock the chain link gate. His regular work attire, even in August, includes a hardhat, a once-brighter orange vest and boots. The sun is high and hot, despite the early hour; and in the brief moments that people aren’t talking, your ears discern the soft harmonies that comprise the sounds of a living forest. This is where the Finch Paper story begins. And begins again. And again.

If there’s one major take-away from this part of your visit to Finch Paper in Glens Falls, New York, it’s that the company cares deeply about the land, and the people, animals and plant life that inhabit it. This knowledge grounds you in a way that you didn’t expect. As the day goes on, you realize that caring for the earth is of equal – if not more – importance than making great paper, in the eyes of Finch’s 750 employees.

As such, Finch goes through a lot of trouble, and expense, to ensure environmental health. To begin with, the company concentrates on making sure its forests regenerate healthfully and productively.

In fact, they’re so good at it that they manage forests for other landowners. After all, over 100 years of experience in the forest, and making paper, gives a company more than a heavy dose of credibility.

The People in the Forest

Following Finch Forest Manager Len Cronin (of the hardhat and boots) slowly over a grassy trail allows you to spy a chipmunk and deer. One shiny wetland area is home to a heron rookery. Young, almost lime-colored moss dots a well-rounded group of rocks, relics of the glacial retreat that defines New York’s topography. Lush undergrowth boasts a profusion of summer color including ferns, daisies and reed-straight cattails.

Len is a patient teacher, sharing multi-colored maps that one of his District Foresters utilizes to keep areas of the forest in different stages of maturity under a watchful, protective eye. The land’s continuing viability is of paramount concern. Less than two percent of the forestlands are harvested in a year.

Back at the mill, your group may be met by Dick McGuirk and Dave Harrigan. The two have known each other for at least 35 years, because you soon find out that this is approximately how long they have each worked at Finch Paper. But they don’t work at Finch anymore. They’re retired, but come out to take visitors on the mill tours.

Dick and Dave put your group on a small white bus and finish each other’s sentences as the bus rides uphill alongside the Feeder Canal, built alongside the Hudson River in the early 20th century to protect water supply to the Champlain Canal. The bus drives slowly past a tremendous roundwood pile, which feeds fiber to the mill in order to produce an average of 700 tons of paper every day, 365 days a year.

The most pristine logs are not here – they’ve already been pulled for use in furniture and cabinetry. Some treetops and limbs are left in the forest to support regrowth and wildlife, and the rest is being used to make landscape mulch or to fuel Finch’s biomass generator that helps to keep the mill running.

Integrated from Forest to Delivery

Oak, maple, cherry, birch, beech and long-fibered hemlock, which give the paper strength, is debarked, chipped and ground into pulp (the wood fibers mixed with water). A 98:2 ratio of water to pulp then embarks on its journey through the mill, finding its way to one of Finch’s four papermaking machines. The newest is 750 feet long – the equivalent of three New York City blocks.

And so it goes, from there to sizing, converting and packing for shipment.

Finch Paper is one of only a handful of American paper mills that are truly integrated, from forest to delivery.

What it all means for you and your customers

As one of the few paper companies that can control cost and quality because it is vertically integrated from forest to delivery, Finch makes it possible for designers, print buyers, agencies, marketers and their clients to get everything they want in a paper, without compromise.

All the wood the mill uses – all of it – comes from sustainable forests. Forests Finch has grown for generations. Forests that have been designated a “carbon sink” for continually growing and removing CO2 from the atmosphere.

Sixty-six percent of the power used to produce Finch’s pulp and paper is renewable “green” energy – a combination of hydropower and biomass. All of the paper is certified by the Sustainable Forest Initiative; and Finch Fine, for example, is even certified in accordance to the Forest Stewardship Council standards. And all of the papers are elemental chlorine-free. Finch Fine is all of this, plus it contains 10 percent postconsumer recycled fiber.

Made with perfectly formulated pulps on Finch Paper’s premises, Finch Fine has an even, closed surface for greater ink holdout, smoother solids and higher opacity. It’s a big part of why Finch was voted Best In Class in a recent survey of more than one hundred commercial printers. They cited the “best printed results” and “trusted press performance” of Finch papers.

Finch Fine exemplifies the company’s commitment to excellence and value, as one of the brightest, smoothest and most affordable premium papers for full-color printing and copying.

It’s just one in a product line of simple, authentic, beautiful paper that started its life in a forest like Len’s. This part of its lifecycle may see it a canvas for literally anything from a children’s book or annual report to a warranty on a coffee machine or a college acceptance letter. You’ll throw it away, put it in a drawer, keep it on your night table or display it proudly in your home, where this cycle of its life is joined to yours.

© Finch Paper / Previously published by PaperSpecs