Paul Opie, Partnership Manager at Carbon Balanced Paper, explains his reasons for joining the environmental programme and what businesses and brands can get out of being a member.
What does your role involve at Carbon Balanced Paper?
As Partnership Manager, my role is to support the certified carbon balanced printers, those companies that have measured their operational emissions and offset them through World Land Trust. I also have the task of expanding awareness of the initiative, delivering it to the wider market and engaging with brands, publishers and printers to give them the opportunity of becoming part of the programme.
What’s your background in the print industry?
I’ve spent 30 years in the industry in a variety of roles, including Managing Director at Latimer Trend, which brought me into contact with the latest technology that supports the evolving needs of the industry. To be part of a solution for the environmental issue that we are all facing is personally very exciting.
How would you describe the Carbon Balanced Paper programme?
The Carbon Balanced Paper programme helps to deliver a solution for the climate crisis, supporting businesses with a credible environmental solution and giving brands and consumers the ability to make a real difference in real places. It’s a really powerful tool that enables businesses and brands to take immediate action while making continuous environmental improvements.
What are the benefits of the programme?
It delivers two-fold. It delivers in terms of real environmental benefits, but it also delivers additional benefits to the business. It provides a number of commercial advantages, as well as reducing the business’s impact on the wider world. So you’re delivering the benefits and meeting the expectations of brands, buyers and consumers who are focused on environmental action and the sustainability of the businesses that they are looking to buy from.
What impresses you about World Land Trust?
What I particularly like about World Land Trust is they changed the way conservation was delivered. When they set up in 1989, rather than protecting animals by taking them out of their natural environment and putting them into zoos, they understood that the best way to protect them was to buy land. And by buying the land, it protects everything that lives on it and depends on it – the flora, the fauna, the endangered animals and the local communities that work to protect it.
The fact that World Land Trust work with local indigenous people is key, the people that know the animals, the local politics, the local community, and the local issues they have to deal with. They work with them directly and I think that makes a huge difference.
What do you personally get out of your job?
Work takes up such a large part of our lives, so to find work that you enjoy is fantastic. I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve always worked within roles and organisations that I’ve enjoyed, and I really enjoy working in this particular role. All the effort, all the energy, everything that I put into my daily working life makes a little bit of a difference to the businesses that support the programme and the amount of land that’s protected through World Land Trust.
In 2021, World Land Trust raised over £8million, and in 2022, nearly £1million of that will come from the Carbon Balanced Paper programme, all delivered by the power of print. I think that’s absolutely amazing and I’m so proud to be a part of that.
Paul can be contacted at paul@carbonco.info
For more information on World Land Trust please visit www.worldlandtrust.org
