WHICH PAPER?

Two raw materials are used to make most paper: wood, which is what virgin paper is made from, and recovered paper, used paper which is recycled. Recovering used paper has few damaging environmental effects (unlike harvesting wood - see below), it can be recovered in areas close to paper factories, the process of manufacturing recycled paper is also far less polluting than the manufacture of virgin paper and it uses a lot fewer resources. Recycled papers can be just as high quality as those of virgin paper for every common application for which paper is used. Therefore, the best advice we can give you is to use recycled paper whenever you can.

How can we do it

Look for products labeled 100% recycled paper. It is usually manufactured from post-consumer paper, although it is not always labeled as such.
You can suggest that the copy shops and printers which you work with move over to recycled paper. There is no technical reason these days not to.
For writing paper, there are manufacturers who make recycled papers on sale in several Mediterranean countries, such as Steinbeis or Vertaris. These manufacturers also produce recycled papers which are widely sold under other brand names, such as Motif Recycled, Océ, Xerox, Antalis... Nautilus brand paper can also be easily found, produced by the South African multinational Mondi.
There are few brands of disposable paper items made from recycled paper, if you look you can find them. For example Renova Green, sold mainly in Portugal and Spain. Also there are quite a few of brands of recycled paper disposables available in big supermarkets.
We can find a lot more resources about recycled paper online, for example ici there is an extensive overview in the case of France.

Globally, most of the wood destined to make paper comes from forests, and it plays a part in deforestation and forest degradation in some countries. It also comes from tree plantations, which, like other intensive monocultures, have many problems associated with them. Particularly in countries of the global South,where raw materials are exported for the benefit of powerful foreign entities. In the case of virgin paper, in order to minimize the damage that is being done, it's important to choose paper with a forest certification.

How can we do it

Nowadays, the FSC certification is the best indicator that the wood used to make something has been logged sustainably.
However, the practice of forest certification is not entirely free of controversy.

One of the most problematic environmental effects of paper making is the use of chlorine to bleach paper pulp, whether it is made of virgin or recycled raw materials. These chemical processes combine heat, organic matter and chlorine (or chlorine compounds) and can generate a variety of substances such as dioxins y furans, which are some of the most toxic substances known, both for human beings and the environment. Here we can see what techniques are used to bleach paper. Don't choose papers which have been bleached with chlorine.

How can we do it

There are many reasons why you might need paper to be white; but lots of today's unbleached recycled papers are bright enough for your needs.
Papers that have been recycled without bleach are known as TCF (Totally Chlorine Free) or, in the case of recycled paper, PCF (Process Chlorine Free).
The Blue Angel seal is only awarded to papers which are 100% recycled from post-consumer content and have not been bleached or have been bleached without chlorine (papeles PCF). Other seals of environmental quality that we can find on brands of paper (Cisne Nórdico, Ecolabel) confess to using chlorine in bleaching.