Taking a Holistic Approach to Sustainability

As consumers become more eco-conscious and printing companies invest in ESG efforts, sustainability has grown from a trend to the standard. On both sides, environmental concern is shaping behavior. For print businesses wanting to go green, there are some go-to areas of business to consider.

“Instead of focusing on the chemistry of the products or the chemistry that you’re using, really review sustainability practices that you’re actually utilizing in production,” advises Theresa Vanna, chair of the board of directors for the Sustainable Green Printing Partnership (SGP). “Because that has a bigger impact than a few microns of ink on a sheet.”

Build a Sustainability Policy

If a print operation wants to reevaluate and make changes, it needs to understand what sustainability is and is not. Sustainability is more than choosing different inks and checking off boxes. “It’s best to look at sustainability as a complete program,” says Gary Jones, vice president of environmental, health, and safety affairs at PRINTING United Alliance. It’s a journey, philosophy, and framework.

Before shops choose better alternatives for consumables, Vanna says knowing the impact of those products and how to dispose of them is important. “Analyze your disposal,” she says. “[If] it’s ink cartridges, do you have a take-back program with your supplier? Do you have local recyclers in the area?”

Identifying goals, building a policy, and taking a holistic approach is essential to a successful program, Jones says. “If you have a sustainability policy, you’ve thought that through, and you’re making a statement to stakeholders,” he says. “And your stakeholders are going to be your vendors, customers, employees, and the local community. Before you start venturing off and doing some individual activities, you need to have a plan; you need to have a vision.”

With core values and a policy outlined, companies can begin to dig into the metrics of their business. These metrics can provide printers with a baseline to measure progress and credibility, as well as transparency with stakeholders. Metrics need to encompass a company’s environmental and personnel impact and include greenhouse gas emissions; water consumption; air pollution emissions; waste generation and recycling rates; and employee injury and illness rate.

“Clients want to understand the impact of these actions too,” affirms Amy Tardiff, employee owner and vice president and general counsel at J.S. McCarthy Packaging + Print, based in Augusta, Maine.

Track Energy Consumption

When deciding what metrics to track, Jones emphasizes energy. It’s a big producer of carbon emissions, with substrate falling shortly behind. Prioritizing energy reduction significantly cuts consumption, lowers greenhouse gas emissions, betters the local and global community, and saves on operating costs, he says.

Tardiff says reducing energy is not just an “added benefit to partnering with a printer,” like it once was. Today, she says clients have it on their list of objectives when choosing a vendor.

“By investing in sustainability efforts, printers are aligning with clients’ values, thereby building stronger relationships,” she says. “Rethinking energy consumption means looking beyond the social objective and seeing it as an investment in future growth, just like a new piece of production equipment.”

Unless a printer already knows its energy consumption, there’s no way to track the effectiveness of a program. Understanding where carbon lies within manufacturing and looking for ways to reduce those emissions is what decarbonization is all about, Jones adds. Energy consumption metrics can include electricity purchased; natural gas, propane, gasoline, and diesel consumption; and combustion of ink solvents in an oxidizer.

And despite the belief that energy efficiency means high costs and investment, that’s not always the case. While new LED lighting systems and solar panels are costly, the Inflation Reduction Act offers businesses tax credits for their investments. Companies can also receive additional funding through state programs and local utilities where available.

For those on a budget, Jones suggests buying occupancy room sensors. “I’ve gone into a lot of printing facilities. You walk in, and there’s lights on and nobody’s in any room,” he says. With sensors, no movement means no light.

Commercial printers can also shut down machines, equipment, and computers at the end of each day. Maybe there’s an eco- or energy-saving mode shops can use so they’re not waiting for machines to reboot. Can employees turn off lights, computers, or air conditioning at night? These low-cost action items can add up, but printers need to know their consumption to understand their impact.

Reduce Waste

Solid waste — and emissions that come with it — can’t be overlooked either. This includes substrates, shipping materials, packaging, containers, and more. Some printers take a scientific approach to waste generation — monitoring each workstation and finding ways to reduce waste. Others commit to zero landfill.

“If you have a printing operation, and you make a commitment to go zero landfill, that means you’re either finding outlets for all the waste that you’re generating — to be recycled or maybe composted, like food waste out of your lunch area — or preventing it from being generated in the first place,” Jones says.

If printers really want to rethink waste, he says they should walk the production floor backward and identify what’s going in the dumpster and why. “The answer to that question leads you to the next one, which is typically a why, and then it leads you up, up, up the production chain to figure out the source and then figuring out what can be done about it,” Jones says.

Doing this can help businesses find ways to consolidate materials like inks, scraps, and employee trash. While difficult, it’s possible with willingness, commitment, and the framework built to meet goals. If each employee works together to reduce waste, it becomes more manageable.

Minimizing waste can also save a printer money. Jones recalls one medium-sized printer that would fill up a 30-cubic-yard dumpster four to five times a year. After committing to reusing and recycling materials and consolidating shipments, the business saved $35,000-$40,000 per year.

Tardiff says J.S. McCarthy has also seen these same cost-saving benefits from reducing waste. “In addition to seeing these efforts as customer service and business development tools, waste reduction also equates to real dollars and cents,” she adds. “Every raw material we don’t have to purchase results in actual savings, and every component of the waste stream that can be recycled likewise generates income for our business.”

Consider the End Product

As printers serve businesses and end-users who value sustainability, they need to consider the product they’re producing, materials used, and even lifecycle. From commercial and wide-format, to packaging and promotional printing, the same questions can be asked about a product: What is it made of? What printing process is being used? What happens to it at the end of its life?

Printing equipment, solvents, inks, and substrates are common talking points in sustainable printing. What kind of paper and coatings are used? How about low-VOC inks? Is the fabric or paper organic, biodegradable, or recyclable?

For J.S. McCarthy, Tardiff says, the No. 1 focus is “continual investment” in energy efficient technology, allowing the business to use less energy and raw materials. “Not using a resource is better than finding a greener alternative to one,” she adds.

It also works closely with suppliers who support its sustainability goals and let them know when a new product is available that aligns with those goals — like PFAS-free coatings or VOC-free inks.

And just like J.S. McCarthy likes to have answers to client questions on sustainability, it works with independent mills that offer the same transparency and “environmental data.”

“Printers should also consider that, often, equipment and consumables manufacturers are also incorporating sustainability into their product offering,” Tardiff says. “We’ve got evidence of this on our production floor, where our brand new Heidelberg [Speedmaster XL 106] 21,000 press is CO₂ neutral.”

It’s also important to remember that while many inks and printing processes are conducive to recycling, some are not. “You can’t ignore that as part of your sustainability efforts,” Jones stresses. While there is recycling and repurposing happening in the industry, it can be a challenge. The infrastructure isn’t fully developed, but it’s growing with demand, and printers need to be ready to have the dialogue.