Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Brighter, Whiter Trend for White Papers

All the leading companies are now marketing their white papers as ‘brighter and whiter’. If fact nearly all office papers are now boosting a brightness level of 92 -- up from 84.
The addition of fluorescent whitener greatly assisted (much like what laundry detergents do to make cloths ‘look’ whiter). Brightness has been measured on a scale of 1-100 – the higher the number the brighter the sheet. However, there are two units of measurement – in USA – The TAPPI system is used while in Europe the ISO system is reported AND these two systems are NOT interchangeable because of different instruments used.
Whiteness (as apposed to Brightness) is now the specification of choice. Both USA and Europe use the CIE whiteness scale. The results are often expressed with 3 results – L; a; and b - and reflect the color or whiteness scale from red to blue to green (which matches what the human perceives).
Although consumers will nearly always pick the brighter, whiter sheet – it comes with a cost – both economically and ecologically. Clearly, it costs more to produce a whiter, brighter sheet and many of these added chemicals degrade both strength of the sheet and cost more.
Paper.com has a complete line of bright-white sheets and ecologically friendly grades. www.paper.com has nearly 20,000 items of paper.

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