As of February, the Leicester-based company will factor the additional price to offset its services’ carbon footprint into the final bill as a non-optional premium for clients who use Haybrooke as an intermediary between themselves and print suppliers.

The scheme is the result of a combination of client demand for eco-friendly initiatives and the Haybrooke team’s own sense of environmental responsibility, and is being developed during January in collaboration with corporate environmental partner ClimateCare.

“We have been calculating the carbon emissions as part of our clients’ data for about 10 years now and presenting them the figures of their consumption,” said Haybrooke chief executive John Roche. “Until now, however, we did not do anything with that information, and it has been shown to be unlikely that our clients have acted upon it much either.

“There is a renewed interest in environmental causes, so we began investigating how we could use that data to calculate the price of offsetting emissions.

“It turns out that the additional cost comes to around 1% more for the average job. For instance, a job valued at £300 would cost £303 in total to make it carbon neutral.

He added: “It seems like a no-brainer to us, especially for our smaller users whose print spend might be around £5m-£10m a year or less. Reaction in our base and with our suppliers so far has been very encouraging.”

Roche said that some of Haybrooke’s bigger PDQ users might be more cautious to take up the initiative as a £150m yearly print spend would add £1.5m to offset and make prices less competitive.

However, he said clients with direct relationships with suppliers had expressed interest in moving their approaches and spending in line with the clients for whom the new offset charge would not be an option.

In the future, Roche suggested that areas for development would include usage of plastic in the supply chain – such as the use of laminates. He said this new component was expected to be in place “before the middle of this year”.