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How to Choose an Eco-Friendly Printer
Ecofollower.com has a great story on their website about why we should choose an eco-friendly printing company.
Although we’re reducing the amount of paper we use, partly because of the Internet and email, partly because of conservation, there’s still plenty of ink being applied to plenty of paper. Direct mail, catalogs, product packaging, office paper, etc. It’s all still there.
Yes, these things are decreasing in use. Direct mail is dropping, people are reducing the number of catalogs they receive, but that doesn’t mean they’re gone. We’re still printing lots and lots of mail, catalogs, flyers, coupons, and brochures.
So it’s important that we use eco-friendly printing services whenever possible.
I don’t know a single printer who doesn’t recycle their paper waste, so that’s not going to be an issue. But a lot of printers are still using inks with high VOCs (volatile organic compounds), the chemicals found in most inks and laminates.
There are a few things to consider when you want to use eco-friendly printing.
- Look for a printer that uses sustainable — that is, FSC or SFI certified — paper. This is paper that has been certified to come from managed forests, has minimal energy consumption, uses no hazardous chemicals, and other green practices. Note: You do have to ask for this paper.
- Ask for ultraviolet ink. Ultraviolet ink is water-based, and has no VOCs, which means it’s safer for the print shop workers and the environment. And it has a wide color and opacity range, so you can get great color output, and your printed piece will look great.
- Even your signs can be green. Find a sign printer that can print with ultraviolet inks rather than vinyl or petroleum-based inks.
- Make sure your own design is green. Stick with standard paper sizes, like 8.5. x 11 or 11 x 17. Use solid colors, not patterns, for a background if your piece has a bleed (color that extends all the way to the edge). And avoid weird designs that require a lot of cutting and paper waste.
Green printing is the wave of the future, and pretty soon any printer who wants to grow and thrive in the coming years will embrace green technology.
The Controversy Over Green Printing
Carbon offsetting, you’ve likely heard of it – it’s the practice of mitigating your carbon emissions not through changing your actions, but by paying a fee to a carbon offsetting scheme. For some printers, it’s a way to distinguish themselves as a green printing company. For others, it’s a relatively unregulated industry that does little to actually help the environment.
PrintWeek magazine ran an interesting article a couple of weeks ago,
Tags: Green Printing, print shops
Ten Steps to a Greener Print Shop, Part 2
Last time, we covered the first five steps to a greener print shop. Here are the remaining five.
6. Offer green paper options
Offer your customers a range of ‘green’ papers from recycled stock to paper made from alternative sources such as hemp, cotton, or even stone (yes, we said “stone”). And while you’re at it, learn about your paper. A good green printing company should not only offer a greener product, they should be able to explain exactly why that product is more environmentally friendly.
7. Reduce your in-house energy consumption
New machinery won’t just improve your productivity and print quality, it can also drastically reduce your energy consumption. Turning off the lights when you leave is one thing, but saving thousands of watts a year on a major piece of equipment is a whole other ballgame.
8. Dispose of your waste properly
Sustainable printing doesn’t stop once the print job has been shipped. Your green practices should extend all the way to your waste disposal and recycling. Do you know what qualifies as hazardous waste in your shop? Do you know how to dispose of it properly? Are you disposing of it properly? Is it possible to switch to a printer or ink that’s non-toxic and therefore does not generate any hazardous waste?
9. Dispose of your equipment properly
So, you’re buying a new printer that’s energy-efficient and better suited to non-toxic inks. What are you going to do with your old one? How will you dispose of it? Is it possible to reuse any of the parts or find someone who could reuse the parts? A number of equipment manufacturers run recycling programs, you just have to ask.
10. Scrutinize your supply chain
You may claim to be the most green printing company in the world, but that doesn’t mean much if your suppliers are some of the planet’s worst environmental offenders. Do your best to make sure the suppliers you’re dealing with are not only doing their own bit to reduce their environmental impact, but can back it up too. It’s one thing to stamp “Green” on a product, it’s another to prove it.
Ten Steps to a Greener Print Shop, Part 1
We’re taking a look at 10 steps you can take to having a greener print shop. We’re breaking it up into two posts, so be sure to check for the next five next time.
1. Get a handle on your environmental impact, then reduce it.
You can’t claim you’re practicing sustainable printing unless you have a clear understanding of where you were at when you started, what you’ve done to be “greener” and exactly how much of an impact each of those practices has made. Otherwise, you’re just blindly buying up recycled “green” paper stock and vegetable dyes without a plan or understanding of exactly how this is going to change your business.
And remember, being a green printing company goes beyond offering alternative paper options. It means reducing your own waste and changing your office culture – from composting in the lunch room to offering incentives to employees who carpool or use public transit.
2. Offer print-on-demand and custom quantity services
Forcing your customers to print 1500 copies of their annual report when they only need 800 is not green printing. Instead, start offering custom quantities on an as-needed basis. Out of all the sustainable printing strategies, this could be the one that reduces the most waste.
3. Use bigger sheets more wisely
It takes a lot of energy to create one sheet of paper, so make the most out of every single sheet of paper that comes through your shop. Do runs on larger sheets, use both sides whenever possible and reduce your own internal paper usage.
4. Switch to an all-digital work flow
This sustainable printing strategy is going to depend on the software you’re using (a decision that we here at Lloyd’s of Indiana can help you with), but switching to an all-digital work flow will not only reduce your labor costs, it’ll cut down on your paper consumption too.
5. While you’re at it, switch to digital proofs too
Whenever possible, use soft proofs with clients. In other words, email a copy of the proof to a client instead of printing it, packaging it and then having it couriered over to their office. We understand this isn’t always possible, but even a 15% reduction in the number of proofs you ship or mail can have a huge impact.
5 Tree-Free Papers
The Sustainable Printing blog hosted on Today.com recently posted a great piece covering the five most popular, tree-free green printing papers available today.
Not all of them are widely available or cost-effective, but a few are catching on in the green printing industry as viable alternatives to traditional tree-fiber.
Hemp Paper
It grows fast, has incredibly high yields and it’s durable — making hemp an incredibly versatile material. For most commercial applications, hemp is combined (usually in a 1:3 ratio) with recycled tree-derived paper stock.
Unfortunately, this process of recycling, washing and bleaching recycled stock and then combining it with hemp fiber uses a lot of water, electricity and resources. If your goal is sustainable printing, I recommend investigating both how this particular paper was manufactured and the size of the manufcaturer’s ecological footprint.
Cotton Paper
Cotton paper is bright, white and beautiful to work with. It feels amazing between your fingertips and it actually lasts much longer than traditional tree paper. However, cotton paper is also exceptionally expensive.
There’s also the sustainable printing argument that growing that much cotton to sustain a paper industry would require an epic amount of farmland and more resources (watering, maintaining, processing) than tree-derived papers. So, while cotton may be green paper in small amounts, it doesn’t scale well into mass production.
Kenaf Paper
Like hemp, kenaf grows quickly and produces a high yield. And because kenaf is naturally white, it requires significantly less bleaching than paper made from tree fibers. Today, kenaf is poised to be the next big green paper in the sustainable printing industry.
Bamboo Paper
I’ve heard of bamboo socks, but did you know they also make bamboo paper? Though not widely available, bamboo paper is being developed and marketed as a green paper. It’s expensive, but if it catches on, the price could come down.
Rock Paper
No, not Rock Paper Scissors. Rock paper is essentially made from limestone and will eventually break down over time, particularly when exposed to the elements. There’s no bleaching involved, but don’t expect long term durability with this green paper choice.
Photo: Joi (bamboo)
Photo: Ingermaaike2 (hemp yarn)