Brunel has teamed up with Climate Partner to offer the new service, which it officially launched on 1 September, after Brunel commercial print director John Tugman first reached out to Climate Partner last April.
Tugman said: “I think I saw an article about Climate Partner, which got me thinking, because our market is very much creative agencies, marketing agencies and blue-chip companies.
“I used to work very closely with B&Q and saw what they did with timber and the like and as we are in Bristol and are an unusual printer in that we do most of our finishing in-house, we wanted to differentiate ourselves further.
“I reached out to Climate Partner and asked what this entailed and they’ve worked very closely with us ever since.”
Tugman added that Brunel will be able to afford the extra fees for the carbon neutral printing by taking funds out of its marketing budget.
“We decided that there was sufficient premium to enable us to do this out of our marketing budget. It is a marketing initiative in itself,” he added.
Climate Partner audit printers for carbon neutral printing by calculating how much CO2 is being produced based on electricity, gas, travel and various materials used.
The fees currently being paid by Brunel are going towards two projects, one in Kenya, supporting a project that provides water filters to locals, thereby reducing CO2 emissions, and the other in Papua New Guinea, funding the stewarding of rainforests to protect species and remove CO2 from the environment.
Brunel has also been ISO 14001 certified for a number of years and Tugman has previous experience in the area when he worked with Typhoo Tea, the first tea to adopt Fairtrade rules, as a buyer.
The £6m-turnover operation is made up of three arms, its main commercial arm, which Tugman oversees, then Brunel Promotions, which produces calendars, diaries and promotional gifts for the B2B market, and Brunelone, its web-to-print department.
Tugman said the commercial arm of the business is currently growing 30%-40% year-on-year.
It runs three HP Indigos, two Speedmasters and has Roland wide-format kit, along with various bits of finishing equipment, including a Motioncutter laser finisher installed in late 2014.
