May ’07 meeting recap
A Convenient Truth…making a better impression with green printing
For the last monthly meeting of the season, we welcomed a distinguished panel representing corporate print buying, paper and printing to provide an update on best practices for sustainability.
Our panel consisted of: Isabelle Renaud, VP-Production/Worldwide Creative Services for Warner Home Video; Joe O’Connor, Senior Vice President/Sales for Mohawk Paper; and Mark Tenant, President/General Manager for Cenveo Anderson Litho.
Q: How does your company deal with waste reduction?
A: (Isabelle) Throughout Warner Bros. Studios, we practice waste reduction, material reuse and donations, environmental purchasing, energy efficiency and green-building. All corporate stationery is printed on 100% post-consumer recycled chlorine-free paper. DVD product packaging is printed on 30% post-consumer recycled paper. Our corporate responsibility mission statement emphasizes environmental stewardship and takes this commitment very seriously.
(Joe) In the paper industry, we get to reuse everything in terms of water and fiber. Even the direct byproduct – known as “sludge” – is mixed to make high-grade compost. It’s a fairly clean running operation.
One common area of confusion is the difference between pre- and post-consumer waste. “Post” is fiber that has been in the municipal waste stream and has been reclaimed. “Pre” has not been touched by anybody – such as mill-broke (scrap generated in a mill that’s reused in the manufacturing process). FSC (Forest Stewardship Council)-certified papers come from certified, well-managed forests and can be manufactured from virgin or recycled (pre- or post-consumer waste) fibers.
(Mark) We have a full-time person and a team of people devoted to find the waste streams we are producing and manage them in the most environmentally-friendly way…how we handle paper waste and water. We have our own environmental system that recycles the air, takes the fugitive emissions out of the building and incinerates them. Before our current practices were in place, we bought VOC credits on the open market to offset the pollution credits needed before installing another press. We came up with a co-generation power plant that allows us to sell electricity back on the grid and we manage the VOCs within the same system.
VOCs (Volatile organic compounds) are free radical byproducts of chemicals. It’s found in inks, blanket wash and solvents. The VOCs in these products evaporate, go into the atmosphere and create smog which creates air density which produces greenhouse gases. Printers must buy VOC credits to offset the amount these chemicals emit.
Q: How are companies addressing climate change and energy conservation?
A: (Joe) “Offsets” – both good and bad – must be addressed within all four walls. Mohawk is a non-integrated mill – we support all third-party certifications. In terms of regulatory compliance, we do a lot voluntarily and often exceed the minimum requirements. Old steam boilers were replaced with cleaner-running state-of-the-art models, which reduced fuel consumption by 14% and emissions by 38%. In other areas, energy consumption has been reduced by 15% on a per-ton basis. We recently switched our trucks to run on bio-diesel fuel, which is 30% vegetable oil and 70% high-grade diesel. Sixty percent of our electrical consumption is offset with renewable energy certificates. We offset one million miles of driving (from our sales force and inter-mill trucking) through a program with NativeEnergy called WindBuilders, which goes towards building windmill farms in Minnesota. Most recently, we announced the first carbon-neutral product which is another set of offsets called VERs (Verified Emission Reductions).
Q: Are soy-based inks really better for the environment?
A: (Mark) Green is the new black – it’s “in.” “Green,” “organic” and “natural” have become the new marketing terms. For heat-set webs, soy-based inks contain 7% soy, 20% for sheetfed presses, and more for cold-set newspapers. Inks are traditionally made from linseed and cotton oils, which are also natural, renewable resources. But the soybean growers have been more aggressive in their marketing efforts. The challenge is the higher soy content requires more drying agents.
Q: What extra steps can designers and print producers take when creating print materials?
A: (Isabelle) When possible, we look at reducing paper size or selecting a different stock. In the entertainment industry, we’re tasked to create impactful materials which may still use metallic ink and foil stamping. However, we’re challenged to find renewable resources, such as paper made from cornstarch and items made from potatoes.
Q: Is it true UV inks do not contain VOCs?
A: (Mark) UV inks are completely different from conventional sheetfed or web-based inks. The photo-initiators and monomers in the inks are immediately dried when exposed to UV lamps and do not release VOCs. The downside of UV inks is the perception that you can’t recycle paper printed with UV inks, but more current research shows that with negligible effort, you can recycle and re-pulp the paper. Similarly, with special filtration, metallic inks can be captured and recycled.
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Attendees of this meeting received several handouts, including a list of FSC-certified paper stocks, FSC-certified APALA print vendor members, as well as a list of sustainable practices to ask your print providers. Copies of these documents can be downloaded from our website, apala.org.
A special thank you goes to Nan Faessler and Eva Quan for organizing and facilitating this meeting, as well as our three guest panelists for sharing their knowledge and experiences with us.
Enjoy your summer. APALA will resume its monthly programs in September. Join us for the return of last year’s popular program featuring speed roundtable discussion groups. If you have suggestions for discussion topics, submit them to vero@apala.org.
FSC List FSC Grades Print Supplier Sustainability Questionnaire
