Phone-Sex Service Gets Boost from Lands' End, International Paper

Here's one for the No Good Deed Goes Unpunished Department: Lands' End and International Paper are among the companies whose names have recently been connected to a telephone-sex outfit offering hundreds of "hot, horny girls . . . who love nasty talk."

The accompanying scan shows an example of the inadvertent promotion of the "Intimate Encounters" operation: It's from a panel of a box that was manufactured by International Paper and used to deliver Lithonia Lighting products to a construction site several months ago. The box includes the message "Corrugated Recycles", with a toll-free phone number to call for more information.

The American corrugated industry, however, phased out (800) 879-9777 at the end of 2007. Callers now are greeted with a recorded come-on that begins, "Hey there, sexy guy", as explained in "Hey, big boy, can I recycled your cardboard?"

It's taken awhile for the word to get out about the phase-out; some recycling information Web sites still list the number. And even companies that stopped ordering boxes with the phone number didn't throw away their existing boxes or pull the boxes off of dealers' shelves.

One Dead Tree Edition correspondent got a box displaying the 800 number from Lands' End last Christmas. He says the Sears subsidiary responded quickly to his email about the situation. Lands End apologized, said it was "shocked" to learn that the phone number had been changed, and offered a coupon, he reports.

One advantage of corrugated boxes is their durability. No doubt there are thousands of "porno cardboard" boxes in homes across the U.S. containing everything from Christmas ornaments to tax records to children's toys.

And one of the strengths of print is its durability. It doesn't disappear when a server goes down or a hard drive crashes.

Moral of the story: Printing a message on a corrugated box is great if you want the message to be around for a decade -- and not so great if you want to change the message after a year.

Disclosures: Although I've written several articles about "cardboard porn", I don't really get it. I'm not a pedophile, so the idea of talking nasty with "girls" seems creepy; I prefer women. Come to think of it, "telephone sex" sounds like an unnatural act. Then again, I don't know much about pornography. I don't even own a pornograph.

Pulp Fiction: Eco-Credits for Black Liquor

A federal program intended to promote the use of renewable fuels is instead encouraging U.S. paper companies to pursue some rather "un-green" practices, such as substituting virgin pulp for recycled pulp.

If the "black liquor" tax loophole persists, it could turn the market for publication papers topsy-turvy and lead to public backlash against paper companies -- and perhaps their customers.

At least two U.S. containerboard mills recently switched from recycled corrugated to wood chips as their fiber source because of the loophole, and others are probably doing the same, Pulp & Paper Week reports in its April 10 edition. (As I wrote in "Hey, Big Boy, Can I Recycle Your Cardboard?" four months ago, the market for recycled corrugated was already so weak that perhaps it's a good thing that the "Corrugated Recycles" phone number was taken over by a phone-sex outfit.)

Most, perhaps all, U.S. kraft-pulp mills are receiving or have applied for alternative-fuel credits for using a mixture of black liquor and a bit of diesel to power the mills, according to Kevin Mason of Equity Research Associates. The credit is worth roughly $200 per ton of pulp, he estimates, which means the federal government could theoretically end up paying out $10 billion for these credits. The current market price for kraft pulp is about $600 per ton.

The credits come from 2005 transportation legislation intended to encourage the use of non-fossil fuels, but the effect for paper companies is just the opposite: For decades, kraft-pulp mills have been using black liquor, a pulp byproduct, for power, but they can only receive the fuel credits if they mix some fossil fuel into the black liquor.

The credits also give paper companies a perverse incentive to use kraft pulp instead of mechanical (groundwood) pulp. Mechanical pulp is usually considered environmentally preferable to kraft because it uses fewer trees and causes less pollution.

Kraft pulp is generally more expensive to make than mechanical pulp, which is one reason that freesheet papers command a price premium over papers containing mechanical pulp. But the fuel credits might actually make kraft pulp cheaper for many mills.

So why should such mills make 50# #4 coated groundwood when it would be more profitable to sell 50# #3 freesheet at #4 prices? And why should a company sell a groundwood-substitute at a discount to uncoated freesheet when it would be cheaper just to make the uncoated freesheet?

I don't blame U.S. paper companies, many of which have undergone massive downsizing, for taking advantage of a perfectly legal loophole that could bolster their anemic bottom lines.

But others will. And in an era when the general public mistakenly views digital content as being greener than paper-based content, that could end up being a huge public-relations nightmare for those of us who toil in the dead-tree world.

Huffing & Puffington with Cardboard Porn

Now that the left-leaning Huffington Post’s “green” site is talking about our “cardboard porn” item, perhaps those "adult services" operators need to make their come-on more politically correct. How about:
“Hey there, sexy guy, or gal, or guy who wants to be a gal, or vice-versa, how'd you like to go one on one with one of our hot, horny unionized young women, or young men, or women who used to be men, or whatever, for some real solar-powered conversation. We've got something that will get your free-range, cruelty-free meat steaming – or for you vegans, that will get your organic falafel really cooking."
Speaking of corrugated and being environmentally conscious, here’s a green idea: When you’re cleaning up the cardboard from all of those holiday gifts this year, don’t recycle it. Don't think “Corrugated Recycles,”think “Corrugated Reuses” or, at least for a few months, “Corrugated Stores.” Recycling operations all over the country are storing their scrap corrugated or even landfilling it because they can’t sell it.
The recycling crisis has gotten so bad that RecycleBills – run by a North Carolina poet and recycling manager who looks like a member of ZZ Top, only friendlier – is compiling a free listing of outfits that actually buy post-consumer recyclables. So if you know of one, be sure to send the info to RecycleBill@gmail.com.

Meanwhile, I’ll note that the reindeer – er, caribou – are outsmarting us humans with the double entendres. Northern hardwood – wish I’d thought of that one. And speaking of reindeer, did you hear that biologists have declared that Rudolph and his sleigh mates are actually females – or maybe castrated males? That has absolutely nothing to do with the alleged focus of Dead Tree Edition – production and distribution of publications – but it’ll be a great conversation starter at Christmas parties (or, for you HuffPo folks, at winter-solstice bongfests).

Rudolph the Cross-Dressing Reindeer?

Porno cardboard gets me an extension

Huffington Post has joined the call for double-entendre comments about my article, "Hey big boy, can I recycle your cardboard?"


That prompted a clever item about "woody biomass." But otherwise the response has been pretty limp -- two entries at USNews.com and an argument between two reindeer on my site.


While pulling Christmas ornaments out of decade-old boxes it struck me that this cardboard porn will be around for a long time, some of it on boxes with large logos of prominent retailers and catalogs. (I have one example, but would love pix of or info about others; send them to dead.tree.edition@gmail.com.)


I wonder how many kids working on recycling projects for school or Scouts will call the number, which (as of this morning) still has the same message.

Hey, big boy, can I recycle your cardboard?

Warning: Adult content. Contains suggestive language

and veiled references to unnatural acts with corrugated boxes.

I got word today that those naughty folks in the box industry had come up with a way to perk up interest in recycling: Sex.

Hmm, slip some Viagra into drooping prices for recycled cardboard? Offer "special favors" to those who use waste paper so that it doesn't end up getting landfilled?

Turns out it was a mistake. The official "Corrugated Recycles" logo used to include the number to a toll-free information line, (800) 879-9777. Call that number now and you're greeted with "Hey there, sexy guy" and offered a chance to go "one on one with hot, horny girls ready to talk to you."

The toll-free number was phased out last year and "unfortunately has been purchased by an adult services organization," says an announcement from the spoil-sports at the Fibre Box Association. Some companies are still using it, and the Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry (TAPPI) was still displaying it today it in a list of industry resources.

"To avoid issues with your customers and their supply chain partners and printing plate providers, we would suggest you prioritize removing this referral from all printing dies," says the announcement. "Please also remove this phone number from all documents, websites and any other form of communication in which this number may appear." The organization provides a new logo (with a URL but no phone number) and tips for scraping the phone number off of printing plates.

Still, with recycled fiber starting to pile up because of low prices, maybe we could use the help of that "adult services organization" to arouse interest in buying waste paper. I can hear one of those breathy operators purring to a paper-company executive, "Hey, big spender, how would you like to go one on one with a couple of truckloads of post-consumer office paper? No flocculation, I promise."

Based on what I know of paper executives, that would definitely get their attention -- more so than Candace the Caribou.

Dec. 13 Update: TAPPI removed the phone number from its Web site yesterday. Good thinking, since it was on a page of paper-related resources for students and teachers. But Google the phone number and you'll find plenty of sites that still list it. Also, U.S. News & World Report's Web site is inviting folks to submit double-entendre comments about this article. Let me throw out a few paper-making terms to stimulate your creativity: stiffness, bulk, wet-end chemistry, couch (pronounced "koosh"), and beaters.