2025 Two Sides Partners Meeting Summary

Get up to date with Two Sides and its campaign results, as well as the latest opinion on the global economy from Andrea Boltho, Director of Oxford Economics.

The first Two Sides Partners Meeting of 2025 offered a range of positive and negative news – the positive coming from Josh Birch, Campaign Manager for Two Sides UK, and the less positive from Andrea Boltho, Director of Oxford Economics and regular speaker at Two Sides events.

Opening the webinar, Birch took Two Sides members through the various campaigns the organisations runs, from Anti-Greenwash to Love Paper. Challenging companies that publish misleading statements about paper and the environment, the Anti-Greenwash campaign has had a large amount of success, with Two Sides contacting more than 2,800 companies around the world, with over 1,200 changing their messaging thanks to that contact.

Given that these messages can be hugely damaging to an industry that employs 116,000 people in the UK and 1,096,000 in Europe, costing the UK printing and postal industries an estimated £10 million per annum, the Anti-Greenwash campaign is a vital service and one that will continue to call out companies that mislead the public about paper’s impact on the environment.

Two Sides Campaigns

While the Two Sides Anti-Greenwash campaign is focused on protecting the good reputation of paper, the Love Paper campaign aims to improve the public’s perception of the sustainable benefits of paper and paper-based packaging. With a large number of printers and brands signed up to support the campaign, Love Paper uses a series of online and print adverts to communicate simple facts on the paper industry, including its high recycling rate, biodiversity and low energy usage.

“Through paper and digital adverts, we reach over 230 million European consumers every year, informing them of paper’s sustainable story,” said Birch in his presentation. “We’re grateful to have the support of many national newspaper magazine publishers who donate advertising space to the Love Paper campaign, and in 2024, we had over 2,900 Love Paper adverts placed throughout Europe.”

There are a number of ways that Two Sides members and the wider paper and packaging industries can get involved with Love Paper. A great way to spread the word about paper’s benefits is to print the Love Paper logo on communications, products or packaging. Many companies are already using the logo, and Two Sides is able to change the logo’s text to suit the organisation.

Coming up in 2025 is the inaugural Love Paper Week, a celebration of paper and a chance for the industry to collectively champion its sustainability and attractiveness to consumers and businesses. Taking place on 3-7 February, there will be a range of assets and resources available for companies to use on social media and other platforms, with a full report available in March to assess its impact.

“We ask that you all get involved and support Love Paper Week by using the resources on your social media, emails and online tools to help inform consumers on why paper is a sustainable, effective and attractive medium,” said Birch.

The Economic Outlook

One of the many advantages of having Andrea Boltho, Director of Oxford Economics, talk at Two Sides events is having a regular overview of the global economy and where it’s heading. Another is Boltho’s ability to assess his own predictions and fine-tune them for the year ahead. “I spoke to you exactly a year ago, on the 24th of January 2024,” he began, “and reached a number of conclusions. Let’s see how many I got wrong and how many I got right.”

Out of a series of long-range predictions, there were very few that Boltho was wrong about – and given the problems of 2024, he could be forgiven for being a little pessimistic. However, despite the world now recovering from five separate shocks – COVID, inflation, the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the election of Donald Trump – he sees inflation continuing to decrease slowly and GDP growth reviving.

“I see the overall picture as one similar to last year,” he said. “A recovery but, in countries other than the US and Spain, at rates that are not particularly high. However, the uncertainties are increasing everywhere. There were uncertainties last year and there will be even more uncertainties this year.”

Those uncertainties include the prices of energy and oil, as well as the decisions and proclamations of a certain US President. According to Boltho, Trump will not only increase defence expenditure for a lot of countries, including the UK, but also cut taxes for US companies and possibly its people. Then there’s the issue of tariffs…

“If tariffs go up then imports to the US become more expensive,” Boltho explains, “switching demand from imported goods to domestic goods. But domestic goods are in short supply because potential growth is being hit, leading to higher inflation and higher interest rates. In addition, there’s the danger of a trade war, with most countries stating that tariffs will lead to retaliation of some sort.”

The key to growth, Boltho argues, is technology. And here, the UK is in a good position, with a lack of regulation compared to other countries and a healthy proportion of exported technology. “Technology is the key to growth,” he said. “It’s certainly unpredictable but technology holds the key to success over the medium term.”

To watch the webinar and download the presentations, go to twosides.info/uk/2025-two-sides-partners-webinar-recording