And probably many many more times if you take into account all the occasions well-meaning, but not necessarily very clued-up, customers have voiced concerns.
It can be difficult to know where to start in counteracting this, particularly when it’s such a general accusation. And indeed stats about why UK print is actually on the whole a pretty responsible, sustainable industry are tricky to come by – inspiration, perhaps, for printers to lobby their trade bodies to collate these.
Nonetheless, PrintWeek has compiled some oft-cited environmental FAQs or FAOs (frequently aired objections), and suggested responses. Of course, there’s always a lot more printers could do to reduce their individual impact on the planet, but print gets an unfairly bad rap. And it’s time we all set the record straight.
Waste disposal
FAO “Landfill is such a huge issue currently, and I don’t want to support an industry that is producing items that are inevitably contributing. I’m worried too about all the different waste materials manufacturing processes must inevitably produce, and what happens to these.”
Response First off, the print industry is now doing a really good job by all accounts of recycling the different waste products it creates through production. In fact, with landfill taxes now so high, us printers mostly can’t afford not to recycle. (Insert quip about printers being a mercenary lot here...)
Print-specific waste management company J&G Environmental has seen a “dramatic” increase in the number of waste streams being recycled. 20 years ago J&G was collecting and recycling less than 10 print industry by-products, mainly aluminium plates, fixer and used film. 10 years ago the figure had risen to about 20. Now some 180 different waste streams are being collected with 95% being recycled. So there.
Regarding waste disposal once the print product’s been used, in fact recycling rates in Europe are looking increasingly rosy, with paper the most recycled product in the world. Last year’s European Recovered Paper Council (ERPC) report announced an impressive 71.7% paper recycling rate for Europe, with paper fibre recycled on average 3.5 times. In Europe two tonnes of paper are recycled every second.
As you’ll have seen from the steadily multiplying plastic recycling boxes on your doorstop, most councils are now pretty hot on recycling too. 8.7m tonnes of household waste was collected in 2008 – that alone saved the same amount of CO2 that would be generated by nearly a million return flights from London to Sydney (Recycle Now).
Commercial recycling rates are improving too. A total of 25m tonnes, or 52%, of commercial and industrial (C&I) waste was recycled or reused in England in 2009, compared to 42% in 2002/3. A total of 11.3m tonnes, or 24%, of C&I waste was sent to landfill in 2009, compared to 41% in 2002/3 (Defra).
The point: there’s now a strong chance the print we produce for you – and the materials we use to produce the print – will be recycled after use rather than go to landfill.
Deforestation
FAO “There’s always so much talk of deforestation and it really worries me. As an ethically minded company, my business can’t just keep churning out paper products that are contributing to such worrying depletion of the world’s rainforests.”
Response Firstly, paper is not made from rainforest trees. The principal causes of deforestation here are housing and urbanisation, cattle ranching, and production of timber and large-scale cash crops such as soy and palm oil (the World Rainforest Movement estimates that 90% of deforestation is caused by unsustainable agricultural practices).
In fact the majority, 82.7%, of the pulp we use comes from Europe where forests are well managed and responsibly logged. The evidence? How about the fact European forests have grown by over 30% since 1950 and are increasing in size by an area four times the size of London every year, according to a UN FAO Global Forest Resources Assessment.
Energy use
FAO “Print and paper production is clearly a worryingly energy-intensive industry.”
Response Print is an energy intensive industry but, producing 1.1% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, the value chain of pulp, paper and print is one of the lowest industrial emitters (World Resources Institute).
And printers are becoming increasingly energy savvy. Look at any type of energy reduction of more sustainable energy generation measure, such as switching to energy efficient lighting, voltage optimisation and installing biomass energy for example, and there’ll be more than a few examples of printers doing this, perhaps even leading the way.
Crucially, printing kit is becoming ever more energy efficient. And presses are now more geared – through faster makereadies for offset and quicker stand-by kick-in times on digital for example – towards saving time on press.
A key energy-saving technology emerging now is LED curing. To produce approximately 10W of UV light output, LED UV lamps use about 80W of power compared to about 1,200W by metal hallide ‘hot’ lamps, according to Mimaki. Meanwhile energy assessments carried out by Fogra have confirmed that EFI’s Vutek printers with LED curing show energy reductions of up to 82% compared with mercury arc lamps.
Regarding paper production, the European paper industry has reduced the CO2 emissions per tonne of paper produced by 40% since 1990. 54% of the energy used in European papermaking is biomassed based – more than any other sector (Cepi Sustainability Report, 2011).
Chemicals use
FAO “I’ve been on press passes and seen how many chemicals are used – those just can’t be good for the environment.”
Response One of the key things print is doing to clean up its act is switching to processless plates. Figures for how much chemistry and water these save obviously vary. But Fujifilm estimates a printer using 10,000m2 of normal processed plates can save over 2,000l of chemistry, over 400,000l of rinse water and reduce its carbon footprint by nearly 200kg per year by switching to processless plates.
There are no definitive stats on migration to processless, but Agfa, which claims it has 80% market share in processless plates, reports eight out of 10 of its new installs are now its Azura processless plate.
And it’s not all about processless plates. Printers are now typically using less IPA in fount solutions or dispensing with alcohol all together. A recent Solvent Emissions Directive has helped push press manufacturers to make new presses much more geared around using less alcohol. And many inks are also now geared around this (indeed, there’s much activity going on in the world of more environmentally friendly inks – stronger pigments for smarter resource use, for example).
Print versus digital
FAO “We’d like to carry on using print, but it’s just not responsible. So we’re downsizing our print runs where possible and switching to email and online; our more eco-conscious customers’ll appreciate that...”
Response Will they?! Hopefully not... In fact the more eco-conscious consumer will have become alert to recent media attention on e-waste – the potentially significant impact electronic media consumption has on the environment, both in terms of where iPads, computers and phones go when thrown away, and in terms of energy use.
Admittedly it’s tricky to compare the impact of print with that of equivalent digital media in an exact, like-for-like way. But the research that is emerging is beginning to paint a picture which seriously undermines digital’s claims to environmental superiority. Digital media might appear to have less tangible impact, but raw materials needed, how these are disposed of and the surprising amount of energy used to send just a few emails, all have an impact.
Take for instance a Swedish study by KTH Center for Sustainable Communications. It found that a European consumer reading the news for 10 minutes a day online was indeed making less environmental impact, in terms of carbon emissions, than a printed newspaper reader. But more than 30 minutes a day reading the news, and the print edition has a lower environmental impact (28kg of CO2 per year, per person for print versus 35kg per year, per person for online reading).
As for e-readers, one lifecycle analysis has found that if you upgrade before reading 100 books, your carbon footprint actually increases compared to reading printed books.
Some important things to bear in mind are that Greenpeace estimates that by 2020 data centres will demand more electricity than is currently demanded by France, Brazil, Canada, and Germany combined. And that the global volume of electronic waste is expected to grow by 33% in the next four years, when it will weigh the equivalent of eight of the great Egyptian pyramids, according to the UN’s Step initiative.”
