Near Mark Oldfield's desk at the California Department of Conservation sits a ream of copy paper that is more than a routine office commodity.

Made in part from recycled fiber, it is a symbol of the state's green spirit, one ream among thousands backing the department's claim that it is a champion of the environment – and complies with state law requiring it to buy recycled paper.

There is a dark side to those sheets of bright, white paper: the part that isn't recycled comes from trees logged in the biologically rich but endangered forests of Indonesia.

Oldfield, a public affairs officer, was not aware of the connection until contacted by The Bee. Now that he knows, Oldfield said his office will not buy anymore and may try to return the unused reams.

"We're required to buy this type of paper," he said. "And that's what we did."

California has a worldwide reputation as a leader in global warming, more so than any other state. But an ongoing Bee investigation has found some of the state's choices – such as failing to evaluate environmental costs of printer ink cartridge recycling and allowing its employees to travel on the dime of energy companies – raise questions about the effectiveness of its efforts.

The state law requiring agencies to buy large quantities of paper with a minimum of 30 percent recycled content is another seemingly green choice that may be backfiring on the climate.

Over the past two decades, that mandate has helped achieve one of the bedrock missions of the environmental movement: keeping as much scrap paper from piling up in landfills as possible. But the state makes no effort to track the carbon footprint of its policies.

In fact, records obtained by The Bee through the California Public Records Act indicate the state – which purchases about 6 million pages of office copy paper a day and recycles much of it – actually knows little about the full impact of recycled paper.

"There is on-going controversy regarding … post-consumer recycled content in paper products," says a June 24 Department of General Services memo. "We do not understand the process … or its environmental impact."

Wisdom of mandate argued

Like offices everywhere, the state consumes a blizzard of copy paper. About 3.2 million reams, each containing 500 sheets – 1.6 billion in all – were bought last year, state officials estimate. Lay those pages end-to-end and they would reach around the world 11 times.

One of the largest worries is that relying on recycled paper without reducing consumption will hasten climate change because the paper is shipped in from distant locations, increasing greenhouse gas pollution. Nearly all of the paper the state recycles, in turn, is shipped back out again, generating still more greenhouse gas.

"The world is going to fry because we want to buy recycled fiber from the wrong sources around the world and ignore the transportation impacts," said Stan Rhodes, president of Scientific Certification Systems, a Bay Area company that verifies green standards for Starbucks, Home Depot and other companies.

Yalmaz Siddiqui, director of environmental strategy for Office Depot, a major supplier of recycled paper to California from sources in the southern United States and Wisconsin, has urged the state to be skeptical about Rhodes' concerns.

"It's very dangerous to open up the notion that 'recycled is not good' to the marketplace," Siddiqui wrote in an April 27 e-mail to the Department of General Services.

"Yes, Stan will be able to find specific examples where recycling loops cause additional carbon," Siddiqui added. "We need to be very careful that these examples do not confuse the marketplace and force people to simply give up buying green altogether because they don't know what the right 'green' thing to do is."

Currently, about $7 out of every $10 state agencies spend on paper buys paper with 30 percent or higher recycled content – exceeding the legal requirement that half of such spending be for recycled paper. Some agencies – including California Environmental Protection Agency, the state Integrated Waste Management Board and the Department of General Services – even buy 100 percent recycled-content paper.

Call The Bee's Tom Knudson, (530) 582-5336.