Environment

Go green or die – this is the stark warning that some corporate print buyers are issuing to printers. Buyers themselves are coming under increasing pressure from senior management to ensure that all parts of the supply chain are as environmentally friendly as possible. So accreditation such as ISO 14001 and the Forest Stewardship Council’s chain of custody are fast becoming a pre-requisite on tender documents.

This means that if printers don’t hold some level of green certification – no matter how high the quality of the work they do – they won’t even be considered.

Fortunately over the past decade, some printers have anticipated the current demand for greener print and invested substantially in cleaning up their act. Many genuinely care about the impact they have on the environment, though others have done it purely for financial reasons. Whatever the motivating factor, there is now a fine selection of green printers for buyers to choose from (see table, page 68). But do the printers think the time, effort and money they invested in going green was worth it?

It goes without saying that the move towards an environmentally friendly business model doesn’t come cheap. One printer estimates the cost of accreditation and re-audit for ISO 9001/14001 and EMAS to be around £5,000 a year – and then you have to consider the cost of the project manager/consultant on top of that. And it’s not just money you need – it’s also time.

Expensive accreditation
“Accreditation is expensive, not only from the cost for the auditors, but also the hours it takes to implement the scheme,” explains Philip Sudwell, managing director of Wiltshire-based Park Lane Press. However, as Sudwell points out: “You don’t necessarily go green thinking about the money.”

David Gask, managing director at Leicester-based Polar Print Group concurs. “Many within the industry still associate addressing green issues as simply meaning more cost to the business, but that is a very narrow perspective. Being green isn’t just good for the environment: it’s good for business too. Being more environmentally conscious actually helps to reduce costs – more efficient use of energy and better control over waste, for example, also means less financial waste in resources and materials.”

So how can you minimise these costs? Capital Print & Display managing director David Gill says the accreditation process works out cheaper if you’ve already laid green foundations. “Gaining FSC/PEFC accreditation cost around £2,000, but it would have been much more if we hadn’t have had the processes in place already,” he says.

Was it worth the effort and financial outlay? Gill adds that the ROI definitely justified the initial investment and other companies that have gone down the same road agree.

Lex Le Feuvre, managing director of Big Sky, which holds ISO 14001 and has also achieved carbon neutral status, says: “While it is early days yet regarding ROI as we were only certified in May this year, the promised return looks good and it has made a difference to how we are perceived as a company. It has definitely improved our kudos and we have had many congratulations and expressions of appreciation for what we are doing.”

Sam Neal, account manager at Feltham-based Geoff Neal Litho is also a convert. “It’s cost us £100,000 to get where we are after five years, and the savings that we’ve achieved as a result equate to about £80,000, so I suppose you could say that we’re £20,000 out of pocket,” he admits. “But it’s all been worth it because the company genuinely wants to do its bit for the environment.”

Neal says that the firm’s investment in green working practices has opened doors to contracts that might previously have been closed, an experience that is also familiar to Dave Oldfield, quality assurance manager at Alpha Colour Printers. “We won a contract this year in excess of £300,000, but one of the provisos was that we had to have and retain ISO 14001. This, along with being able to offer the FSC/PEFC logo on clients’ work, has enabled us to advance our status as forward-looking and environmentally conscious.”

New contract wins appear to go hand-in-hand with going green. North east-based Potts says that its clients have rewarded its switch to being an environmentally friendly print provider. “We have won new business, not only because of gaining the accreditations but also by putting into practice many initiatives that benefit both the client and the environment, challenging conventional print sizes, materials and processes,” says Potts business development and marketing director John Conway.

Education, education
Another company winning contracts off the back of its green stance – including a three-year deal with a regional development agency – is CW Print Plus. But although managing director David Bland says the investment has paid off in spades, there’s much more education needed on the client side.

“We are surprised that there is still a great deal of misunderstanding surrounding the value of some of the accreditation schemes,” says Bland, whose comments echo the concerns of many of his compatriots. “FSC, for example, seems to have been put onto a pedestal by many who blatantly do not understand what it means. We have seen a number of people specifying ‘FSC accreditation as a minimum’ when tendering contracts, but when you ask them what they think it means they tell you that it means that the paper is all recycled from sustainable forests.”

So the clear advice from printers to buyers is that the buyers need to make sure that they do not become obsessed by green concerns when it comes to choosing a print partner to the detriment of everything else.

“The reality is that print buyers still need to be able to strike a sensible balance between ethical and financial goals,” says Polar’s Gask. “While ethical procurement is often desirable, it can in no way compensate for poor levels of print quality or customer service.”