The Guardian Media Group has been generating lots of headlines of its own this past week, as speculation about the future of the Observer, and the group's ability to sustain ongoing losses, resulted in many column inches. Meanwhile, I found myself generating a few new frown lines after reading a report on the Guardian's website about the environmental impact of its print production supply chain.

Within this illuminating piece there's some information about newsprint purchasing and carbon footprinting. The Guardian has calculated that the UK-made recycled newsprint it purchases has a carbon footprint of 363kg/tonne, whereas a non-recycled grade sourced from Norway has a footprint of just 9kg/tonne thanks to that country's use of hydro-electric power. "We are looking at whether we should alter our purchasing decisions," says the Guardian, which will buy around 88,000 tonnes of newsprint this year.

Shriek! This is the sort of thing that gives me a stabbing pain in the temple. That UK paper makers could potentially be penalised because of our government's energy policy (or rather lack of) is alarming indeed. I remember an illuminating presentation by UPM's director of regional environmental affairs John Sanderson at a PPA gig a while back, which illustrated that this whole carbon footprinting thing is not as straightforward as it might seem. But it is certainly the vogue for corporates to measure their activities this way, even if it is something of a blunt instrument.

As Sanderson points out, it pays to look behind this information at the bigger picture - a company can be incredibly wasteful with its power consumption, yet still have a low carbon footprint. Of course the other issue is the subsequent transport of paper, and the footprint attached to that too.

There could be major knock-on impacts if big paper buyers alter their sources of supply in order to reduce their own carbon footprint, and as a consequence end up forcing everyone else's up.