In the late 1980s, barges of waste were sailing across U.S. waterways with no place to call home, in response to “not in my backyard” opposition to the siting of new landfills in certain states. Wanting to help, newspaper publishers set out to find a solution to the waste problem and called on their suppliers to use more old newspapers to produce new newsprint. In Oregon, newspaper publishers agreed to voluntarily increase their use of recycled-content newsprint, which prompted similar commitments by other publishers in states around the country.

Paper producers responded to newspape...