About us

Sustainable Practices.

Caring for our world is important. Rockstar put into practice the little things such as:

• only using paper accredited as harvested from paper plantations (FSC Accredited)
• recycling paper and resources where possible
• turning off applicance not in use

Our Stance on the Environment.

The following is written by Nathan Leong, Founder and Director of Rockstar Memoirs.

For the past three months, I've been thinking a lot about the environment, and the impact that I and Rockstar Memoirs has on it. I wanted to explain our stance on the environment in a way that didn't sound like marketing - because it's not. I think the best way is to just tell it as it is...

We live in a fragile world, and we're an incredibly irresponsible and selfish species of life that isn't taking enough care of it. We are driven to do things that satisfy our short term needs, failing to realise that it's threatening our own long term survival.

Paper is required to create yearbooks. Over the past few months, I've tried really hard to get multiple and independent perspectives on the actual harms and benefits paper production has to our world. There's a lot of biased opinions, fear-mongering, and greenwashing going on, and it has been quite a complicated research exercise.

At the end of the day, ideally we wouldn't need to cut down trees to make paper. If there were more trees in the world, the negative effects of carbon emmissions would arguably be decreased.

I wanted to clarify however that the trees used to make paper these days, (perhaps contrary to wide-spread belief), is not old growth Amazonian (or Tasmanian) rainforest. Apparently 99.9% of the trees used are specially grown for the purposes of making paper - ie: they are paper plantation forests. That's a good thing right?

I guess so. If you had to make paper in an environmentally friendly way, you would especially grow trees for that specific purpose - so there is no net loss in world tress.

The chemicals used to bleach paper white is apparently quite bad too. I'm no scientist, but anything that turns a brown tree, into a brilliant shining white piece of paper must be pretty strong and rancid.

The energy used to destroy the tree, turn it into pulp, flatten, coat and treat the paper also adds up to an impact on the environment. This all adds up to a negative impact on our world. And yes - I feel guilty because I'm (we're) arguably not putting back in.

I contrast this to the constant energy that is used to power computers. Is electronic really more environmentally friendly? While large corporations like to make us think so - I doubt it.

The point in this message, is that like many others, I'm not 100% sure on the best way to help the environment. Like any major world problem, the problem isn't the money -  the problem is working out how to fix the solution effectively.

I've spoken to many environmental organisations which offer to offset our carbon emmissions. What you do here is essentially pay them to plant trees based on how much carbon you use. I've seriously considered doing this, but I don't think this is the most effective manner, and I question whether they can really make a 99 year guarantee into the future.

I don't believe electronic is the way to go either. I haven't done the maths, but I believe that printing something once, is better than powering on and off each time you want to see something. Obviously this is subject to the frequency you want to view that something, whether it be a bank statement or school yearbook.

The best immediate thing I think we can do, is keep talking about the environment. I have a sense of duty in wanting to help out. We're just not sure on an effective ways to do it. In the meantime, we'll of course do what we can to help out (as per the sustainable practices documented earlier).

Please let me know if you have any ideas on how you think Rockstar can help out. Give me a call directly on 0411 062 480, or you can fill in the contact form.

Nathan.