Mix a radical approach and subsidies to cut emissions

The investment in renewables needed to make a serious dent in CO2 emissions costs hundreds of thousands of pounds, but the savings can be enormous and funding is available to sweeten the pill. Words Tim Sheahan

We would all like to think of ourselves as working towards a better environment, be it through turning our lights off when we’re not in the room, recycling our waste or proudly marching into the supermarket with our reusable bags. And print is no different, companies have for some time been adjusting their processes and premises to reduce the impact they have on the planet.

But while most of us are happy to do our little bits and pieces each day, there are some in the UK who like to push things further. Not content with remembering to close all the windows to reduce heating bills, these are people who want to revolutionise the whole way the building is heated in the first place. Which obviously costs quite a bit of money.

You’d have thought that such expenditure would be furthest from the mind of printers in the UK, such is the fragility of the current economic climate. But those in print that have pushed the envelope and taken the plunge to include environmental initiatives alongside press investments in their capital expenditure plans, say that these big chunks of cash are well spent and provide an excellent return on investment. Far from selfless sacrifice for the sake of the planet, these are business decisions first and foremost.

So to complement our 20 tips under £1,000 to cut your environmental impact article on page 14, we decided it would be a good idea to offer a peek into the other end of the market, where a few more noughts are added to the cheques. The arguments for taking the eco route may surprise you with their persuasiveness.

"You have got to have high capital expenditure to get involved in serious environmental savings, but the payback is always very good in our opinion."
Kirk Galloway, Buxton Press