"You don't want to be the kind of boss who makes people shiver or is petty about lights," says Jeremy Harris, sales director at Barnet-based Splash Printing. "And I just don't think our business will end up saving enough to justify the hassle of worrying about these things."

As starts to environmental audits go, this doesn’t seem a particularly promising one. But at least Harris has seen the worth in starting. Many print business owners, fueled by the omnipresence of environmental matters in their print sales pitches, believe themselves to be green experts and not in need of additional assistance. This is short-sighted. A fresh pair of green eyes can find environmental improvements in areas and to degrees that most print owners would never have considered.

Harris is admittedly doing admirably well on his own. The 13-staff, £2m-turnover company switched some time ago to processless plates, uses FSC accredited paper and recycles all of its ink tins, plates and certain sorts of paper.

And yet there is plenty more the firm could be doing, according to the experts, and there are a number of ways for a print business owner to discover what these are and to find out how to roll them out. For starters, there is a great deal of free information available on the internet if you search for it. In addition, trade organisations such as the BPIF can give you a steer in the right direction. What is arguably of most benefit, however, is using a consultant for an environmental audit; it’s quick, it’s bespoke to your business and the savings made from the recommendations should pay for the cost of the expertise.

So today in Barnet, PrintWeek has arrived to meet Harris and the Splash team with Clare Taylor, environment consultant to the print industry for 15 years, in an effort to demonstrate the benefits that asking for environmental help can bring.

Taylor is well qualified for the job: a chartered environmentalist, a member of the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA), a registered environmental auditor, a fellow of the RSA, an affiliate member of the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management and of the Energy Institute, and she has an MSc in environmental management and auditing too. When you hire a consultant, this is the typical knowledge base you are tapping into (you can find experts in your region through the IEMA website www.iema.net), so printers should be beginning to see that their own knowledge may be lacking in comparison.

It’s not just these credentials and the kind of environmental convictions you’d expect of someone sporting fabulous blue-streaked hair and admitting to being the proud owner of a wormery ("the neighbours are scared they’ll escape!"), consultants also bring a shrewd business mind.

Big savings, small outlay
Indeed, her approach to Harris is businesslike in all senses of the word. Taylor explains that most steps a printer will take to go greener will also save it money, and that in the early stages of an audit she’ll always focus on those changes that could save the printer the biggest amount for the least, or no, outlay.

For this reason, energy and water are first on Taylor’s hit list. Here, she explains, knowledge is power. "Printers are typically very sales focused – they’ll know exactly what sales are coming in, but very little about their outgoings," she says. "But taking costs off the bottom line might equate to a lot of hard work in getting new sales in, so this is really an area they need to look at."

The key, she explains, is to first keep track of how much you spend here so you can then see if it’ll be worthwhile making changes. Once you have established that good savings could be made by, for example, adjusting the thermostat a couple of degrees or encouraging staff to dress more seasonally, printers will, she says, be able to justify the effort of ringing the changes. You may even be able to justify applying for a loan from the likes of the Carbon Trust, to invest in equipment – such as voltage-optimisation kit or an energy-efficient boiler – to save even more.

In the case of Splash, immediate ‘wins’ Taylor identified were to educate all staff about computers’ energy-saving modes, and to switch to energy-efficient T5 fluorescent lighting tubes.

"It happens more often than you’d expect that people can make good savings here," says Taylor. "In printing, the assumption is that ‘the machines use lots of energy so there’s nothing we can do about high energy use’. But a high proportion will be linked to heating, lighting and computers."

The next area Taylor is keen to cast her exacting environmental eye over is waste management. And this isn’t something we can get to grips with going through documents in the comfort of Harris’ office. This is a job for Taylor’s rubber gloves.

"Normally, we’d pull all of this out and get really stuck in," says Taylor cheerfully, up to her elbows in offcuts, boxes and next door’s takeaway leftovers in the firm’s outside bins. "They used to call me the ‘bin cop’ at one company I worked for."

And it soon becomes clear why. What looks to the untrained eye very much like rubbish that could only be sent to the dump, is to Taylor’s mind, another means of reducing Splash’s environmental impact and overheads.

Again, she explains, knowledge is power. Harris needs to do a bit of research to find out whether his local authority, his current recycler Saxon or another recycler will accept slightly more difficult-to-recycle waste, such as plastic strapping and coated ream wrap, for a lower cost than that charged to send these materials to landfill.

"And 80% of what’s in there can be recycled," says Taylor. "Recycling that rubbish could reduce your landfill costs by quite a lot because you could go down to one small bin that you store inside the pressroom, which means you wouldn’t have the neighbours sneaking their rubbish in – you wouldn’t be paying for sending their takeaway leftovers to landfill."

"But it does need somebody to look at the costs and work out the best solution," she qualifies. "You’ll need a recycling company willing to take lots of different waste – plastics, cardboards and difficult metal products like drinks cans – so it’s worth their while to come out."

Energy, water and waste disposal
As we tour the rest of the yard and pressroom, Taylor keeps the emphasis consistently on how saving money on energy, water and waste disposal overheads is as good a way of keeping the business healthy as bringing in more sales. And there are signs that Harris is starting to come round.

"That’s a great idea – why wouldn’t we do that?" he says to Taylor’s simple suggestion that ink tins be carefully stacked to take up less space when collected, thus getting Splash a better deal on recycling. "We have just never thought about it," he adds.

But as well as winning printers round with the business-case for going greener, Taylor is also clearly keen to get them thinking in a more joined-up way. Printers, like the rest of us, can often have trouble visualising just what impact our small actions are having elsewhere, she explains to me later.

So Taylor gets Harris to Google the nearest river to his premises, to get him thinking about where, in the event of a chemical spillage in the Splash yard, these toxic chemicals might end up. And again, it seems some headway is being made. "Ah, now you’ve got me interested," says Harris. "I find sewerage and drainage really interesting – [Victorian civil engineer] Joseph Bazalgette is my hero!"

Of course, there’s only so much even a green powerhouse like Taylor can do in half a day. Even though she warns that printers can be landed with a hefty fine from the Environment Agency for chemical spills – and that avoiding them is tough when delivery vehicles can be carrying all manner of chemical drums headed for elsewhere – Harris seems sceptical about being able to afford drain covers.

"They are quite expensive so people are reluctant to buy something they hope will never be used," concedes Taylor.

So it is a modest triumph that greets Taylor when, debriefing at the end of the day, Harris concludes that he will certainly take some of her suggestions onboard, but still might struggle with others.

But Taylor is upbeat as we say our goodbyes and leave Splash for the day. "There’s always more to do, we could always go deeper" she says. "If we were visiting again I would get them to measure things like energy spends before I came back. But hopefully just a day or half a day’s visit is enough to get a printer thinking and hopefully things will gradually sink in."

"As long as we’ve done some good and got at least some people thinking," she concludes, referring too to this article, "then it’ll be very worthwhile."

CLARE'S VERDICT

Areas where the company is doing well:

• The storage of hazardous chemicals in a flam store, on trays and in a room with a step up to the pressroom, so they can’t escape in case of leaks
• The curtain between Splash’s pressroom and yard area, which stops heat escaping
• Checking that containers collecting waste fount solution are full to the brim so resources and money aren’t wasted transporting partially empty fount cartons
• Good stock rotation to ensure inks don’t get left to go out of date

Action points:

• Splash should check to see if there are any schemes covering their local area that might make them eligible for further free environmental consultations (such as Green Light North London which covers Islington, Hackney, Enfield and Haringey)
• The company should consider investing in spill kits (including drain covers and absorbent booms) for the yard in case of chemical spillages

Energy:

• Harris should keep closer track of bills to see whether worthwhile savings could be made in more efficient use of lighting, heating and computers (www.eu-energystar.org is a handy tool)

If significant savings could be made, consider:

• Turning heating down and encouraging a culture of wearing sensible clothing in winter. Vice versa with air conditioning in summer
• Changing to more energy-efficient lighting
• Where switches turn lights on in banks, changing to individual switches or ambient light sensors
• Ensuring all staff have computers on energy saving modes - particularly energy-guzzling ones used for artwork

Water:

• Splash should keep a closer eye on these bills in case of a wasteful underground leak that could also prove costly

Waste management:

• Staff should nest empty tins when storing so they’ll get more into each collection van and so save money by reducing the number of collections
• Splash should suggest suppliers reduce packaging on items such as stationery if this is excessive
• The firm should look into what else it could recycle. The first port of call should be to see if the local council will take mixed, dry recycling as it already takes Splash’s general waste