Polestar launched its online Carbon Calculator to a host of intended users – publishing customers – while giving an overview of the printer’s work in the area of carbon emissions. Group Risk Manager Gary Marshall pointed to the effects created by unchecked carbon emissions, from pollution to flooding to economic challenges. “Printing is a high-energy industry. Paper uses a lot of energy to make; we use a lot of energy to print; and then we profess to deliver it in high-energy vehicles,” he said.

“We can see the debate. We can see the effects, but do we really understand what’s happening?” Marshall asked the audience: “If we acknowledge the effects, then what are the building blocks to stop them?” His solution? The five steps of the carbon journey: awareness; education; understanding; calculation; and action.

Marshall looked at the world’s own carbon journey, which began with Kyoto in 1997 and led up to the EU’s “first real pieces of legislation” in 1999. Then came last year’s Bali summit, where the world community “switched on” to carbon reduction, he said. The following stages were a string of EU actions, bringing us to the impending Climate Change Bill. The bill will put in place a legally binding target of 60% CO2 reduction by 2050 and force business to “routinely find a 10-15% reduction every 10 years”. He said the most important factor is that everyone be involved in lowering the UK’s emission profile, which is one of the highest in Europe.

Marshall then showed Polestar’s The Journey Revealed film, a slick eight-minute movie that used time-lapse photography to show the entire lifecycle of a printed magazine, from a managed virgin forest in Sweden, through print production, then to the consumer and finally to recycled paper.

Next on Marshall’s agenda was the complicated area of carbon footprinting. He said there was a valuable lesson of footprinting and reduction in the Carbon Trust’s work with Trinity Mirror in 2006. The study found that a copy of the Daily Mirror printed on UK-made 100% recycled newsprint weighs an average of 182g, and its total supply chain emissions are 174g of CO2, calculated as a footprint of 0.95kg CO2 per 1kg sold. Yet Trinity’s own operations contributed less than 20% of that figure; paper production, on the other hand, added 70%.

So it would seem the most direct method to cut a product’s CO2 impact would be at the paper production stage. However, there are two major factors to consider: recycled paper content and energy source. While using more recycled content can cut the footprint, the type of energy used has the most significant impact on emissions. Renewable sources (such as hydro-electric) or low emission (such as nuclear) square up much better than energy fed into the grid from coal or gas, as is the norm in the UK.

Were an equivalent newspaper to be printed on 50% recycled newsprint made in Sweden, which feeds low-carbon energy into its grid from nuclear and hydro-electric sources, the footprint of each final newspaper would drop from 174g to 95g of CO2.

Thus the fourth step on Marshall’s carbon journey, calculation, leads straight into the fifth, action. Marshall said: “Across Europe, people have different ideas on how you measure the value in terms of carbon expended of the energy produced.”

He added: “You always have to start by acknowledging your faults and addressing those faults. And now Polestar is looking out into the wider supply chain.”

The session condensed:

• Printing and publishing are high-energy industries and in order to address their environmental impact, firms need to calculate their carbon footprint
• When the Climate Change Bill is implemented later this year, EU member states
  will be legally bound to reduce their CO2 output by 60% by 2050
• To calculate the accurate carbon footprint of a printed product, printers and publishers must take into account the entire supply chain. Paper has the most significant impact
• Polestar is looking at its own carbon profile and believes supply chain co-operation is the way to make print a more sustainable industry
• Polestar’s Carbon Calculator can be found at http://carbon.polestar-group.com