Green Printing: Taking the Print Out of Our Carbon Footprint
Issue: July 2010 by Megan Norcross in Going Green, Inside The Magazine
It goes without saying that the burgeoning success of online media has cast a substantial shadow over the print world. You can read The New Yorker, Vogue or Rachel Ray magazine online, from the comfort of your home, and without paying the $5 newsstand fee to look at mostly ad space.
Locally and nationally, many questions arise when it comes to the affects print has on the environment. Does the end reader recycle the piece? Does the paper being used have a minimal impact on the planet? Despite the bombardment of questions and speculation on the correlation between print and our expanding carbon footprint, a few area printers are doing their part to ensure it doesn’t become an issue.
“Achieving FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) was the right thing to do on many levels,” Mike Thornton, President of Progress Printing, said. “Corporately, we are vitally interested in being good stewards of our environment and work earnestly toward that objective in every area at [Progress]. Progress Printing was quick to recognize the benefits of FSC certification and was one of the early adopters of FSC practices. I believe we were the second printer in the state to become certified.”
FSC certified printers must go through a series of steps prior to being rewarded the designation.
“The first step in the FSC process is to select a Certifying Body. [Progress Printing] selected Smartwood, but there are several companies that you can interview and price to see who you would like to deal with. Basically, these are the people who will help you through the process of becoming certified and will also conduct your annual audits,” Purchasing Manager, Phillip Pryor, explained.
Susan Higgins, Director of Marketing and Human Resources for Worth Higgins and Associates, furthered Pryor and Thornton’s discussion about the benefits of FSC.
“The standard requires a printer to develop a set of internal procedures which ensure that certified product is identified as such and segregated as it moves through the production process, and that the amount of incoming product and outgoing product is documented,” she said. “Employees are trained and methods of record keeping are established. If the external audit is successful, a chain-of-custody certification number is issued. Moving forward, there are regular internal audits, annual training and annual external audits.”
FSC certified printers run the same presses and operate on the same equipment as that of a regular printer but, according the Thornton, the difference is simple.
“A printer not involved in the FSC program is frankly not an environmentally interested or involved printer—pure and simple. It’s definitely putting your money where your mouth is,” he said.
Along with being FSC established printers, both Progress Printing and Worth Higgins go above and beyond to enhance Mother Nature while decreasing their carbon footprints—even down to the utensils they use in their break rooms.
“Most recently, we instituted a plan to dispose of all of our old electronics and computer equipment through recycling. Not only are these products kept out of the waste stream, but proceeds from the recycling are returned to the community by purchasing computers for schools and other non-profit organizations. And the disposable knives, forks and spoons provided in the employee break room are biodegradable,” Higgins said.
With Progress recycling 15 to 20 million pounds of paper per year and Worth Higgins coming in around 2.3 million, it would appear that both companies are doing more than their fair share. But what’s the difference between FSC certified and regular paper? Is it of lesser quality?
“This matter is often a topic of debate within the printing industry,” Thornton explained. “FSC paper is paper that has auditable proof that it has met certain standards of environmental stewardship from start to finish. The great misconception is that FSC paper is necessarily recycled paper…not so. Recycled paper, which can be FSC certified, or not, is manufactured with some percentage of recycled fibers. If the recycled component of these papers is great enough, they can become dirty appearing and can have attributes that result in the finished product being less attractive. We believe FSC paper may be as environmentally-friendly as recycled paper in that the recycled paper manufacturing process is highly energy consumptive.”
At both companies, their intense passion for printing and providing clients with high-quality pieces has melded with their compassion for the environment; proof that no matter what line of work you’re in, there are always ways to green up the workplace—even if your line of work happens to deal with lots and lots of paper.