Environmental Printing: Recycled Paper Is Only Part Of The Equation
By Donna Gordon Blankinship
Next time you sit down with your marketing team to plan a new brochure or catalog take a few minutes to consider how the printed piece will look in the garbage.
That is the destination of most everything your company prints and a good place to start when considering how you can make a gentler impact on the environment. Printing only what you need and creating something that won't be thrown away are the first steps toward environmentally-friendly printing.
Educating yourself about ecologically-sound products and asking for what you want are the second steps in the process. Unfortunately, it's a lot more complicated than just telling a designer you want to use recycled paper. But that's a start.
It will take some time to change the printing community's mindset about environmentally friendly products, but the process has begun and progress is seen in lower paper prices and willingness to experiment with design and specifications. Especially in the past two years, significant improvement in paper prices and quality have made printing on recycled stock comparable in price to virgin paper, according to printers, designers and end users.
Soy ink and all-petroleum ink prices also are comparable. Printers with environmentally-friendly practices may charge more because some new processes are more expensive and more time consuming. As with any purchase, you have to shop around.
A year and a half ago, Alice Johnson took on the job of corporate environmental coordinator for Nordstrom. The company had both marketing and moral incentives to pay closer attention to the environment.
Nordstrom prints most of its stationary, shopping bags, gift boxes, forms, direct mail pieces and catalogs on recycled paper with post-consumer content.
"The mills are just scrambling to offer us what we want," Johnson said. "In some cases we are now running smaller runs of catalogs on recycled paper. In the past we were just unable to afford it. In the last two years this has changed dramatically."
This year, 90 percent of Nordstrom's forms are printed on recycled paper, compared to less than half a year ago. Johnson credits pro-active buying teams, good environmental information and the availability of recycled paper in the correct price points for the turnaround.
She sees her job as joining economic vitality with environmental stewardship. "We want to be part of solving the problem or at least holding it at bay instead of creating more and more waste," Johnson said.
The Nordstrom environmental policy focuses on reducing waste, increasing recycling, buying recycled materials and items that are recyclable and not spending more to do so.
When the company designed a new credit card application, they made it smaller, eliminated the need for another form and got rid of the envelope by making it a self-mailer. Nordstrom will save a million envelopes a year as a result.
Johnson says every company should and could reassess their printing priorities to make a gentler impact on the environment. American Institute of Graphic Arts/Seattle, a professional association of graphic designers, agrees.
With a grant from the Puget Sound Water Quality Authority and thousands of dollars worth of donated paper, type, ink and printing time, the group produced an inspirational and educational brochure, a seminar and a series of posters to encourage the design community to think environmental.
The "Sound Design" booklet also is a must-read for any company trying to improve its printing policies because it offers a comprehensive discussion of recycled paper, environmentally-friendly printing practices and alternative inks — all from the independent perspective of this volunteer organization.
The booklet begins with a depressing scenario of what the printing world could look like in the future if printers, graphic designer and their clients do not start policing themselves: paper-rationing coupons, hazardous color lists and prosecution of designers who disobey government restrictions.
The message inside is simply: every design decision, every paper choice, every ink selection, every press determination has an impact on the environment.
Using recycled paper with postconsumer content — paper that has had a previous life as another kind of paper — helps create a market for recycled products. But — and there's always a but — if you choose a bright white recycled paper you also may be damaging our water supply because most recycled stock is whitened with chlorine bleach, which produces dioxin. The solution: buy paper that has been bleached by oxygenation, not chlorination, which does not produce as bright a white.
Specifying a vegetable-oil lithographic ink will help decrease air and water pollution because inks such as soy-based products contain less petroleum, but are not petroleum-free. Another thing to consider is the pigment of an ink, which makes up about 50 percent of its content. Some pigments contain heavy metals, which are carcinogens. Metallic and fluorescent colors, which are 70 percent pigment, always contain heavy metals. Varnishes and finishes also need to be considered as they can render a printed piece non-recyclable.
Other sources of air pollution in pressrooms are alcohol fountain solutions and cleaning solvents used by printers. Strict regulations in states such as New Jersey, Southern California, New York and Illinois have forced many printers to switch to alcohol-reduced or alcohol-free printing. Many printers in the Northwest have made the expensive and time-consuming decision to go alcohol free. Ask your printer about their press policies.
One Seattle-area printer has gone one step further and installed a waterless press. Joanne Ellis, sales manager of Alpha One Press Inc. in Redmond, says the company decided to buy the waterless press for environmental and quality reasons. A conventional press operates by using water to repel ink off the plates. A waterless press replaces the water with a roller that is refrigerated, which keeps the ink at the right temperature range to transfer onto the paper. There are fewer chemicals used in cleanup of rollers and the making of plates and the chemicals are replaced every six months instead of every six weeks as on a convention press.
Ellis said the waterless press will accommodate finer screens for photographs and artwork and the process seems to complement recycled paper.
Sharon Mentyka, project director for Sound Design and a partner in Seattle graphic design firm Partners in Design, said the project has encouraged people all over the Pacific Northwest to think more about environmental impacts.
"We weren't trying to make any recommendations. We were just trying to get people to rethink how they use things," she said. The AIGA would like to see environmental education become an important part of design school curriculum so that future graphic designers will work with the environment in mind.
She said designers, printers and paper and ink suppliers are all working together to make changes, but it will take time and money to achieve their goals.
"Clearly the business itself is a dirty business. It takes a lot to retool, bring in new equipment and clean up. But people are doing it."For more information:
About Sound Design, contact Sharon Mentyka at 206-789-8631.