Green Printing Checklist
Greenbiz, a leading information source on aligning environmental responsibility with business success, offers a recommended list of questions to ask about printers and print projects. In addition to answering your customers’ questions, this list is also a good starting point to begin making environmentally friendly choices in your business.
Questions for Printers
1. What is being done to minimize air emissions, including VOCs, ozone-depleting substances, and air toxics?
2. What is being done to reduce chemical use or discharges to sewers?
3. What is being done to reduce solid waste?
4. What is being done to ensure the shop is in compliance with environmental and health and safety regulations?
5. What is being done to minimize the shop's energy consumption?
6. Are the cleaning solvents used safe for human health and the environment? A printer should determine the chemical constituents of cleaning solvents used in the plant and evaluate potential substitutes.
7. What is being done to cut paper waste?
Questions about a Print Project
1. Can the project be printed on recycled paper containing post-consumer fiber?
2. How bright must the paper be?
3. Can the project be printed with low-polluting or recycled inks?
4. What is being done to cut ink waste?
5. What is being done to improve the recyclability of the print project?
Compliance Assistance
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) created PrintSTEP in the early 1990s to simplify the process of the regulatory process for printers and state governments and increase awareness of environmental regulations within the printing industry. PrintSTEP stands for Printers’ Simplified Total Environmental Partnership and was launched as a pilot program in Missouri and New Hampshire. Both programs have ended, but in the evaluation, 100 percent of Missouri printers responded that they were very satisfied and 100 percent of New Hampshire printers were either very satisfied or somewhat satisfied.
Todd Crawford, an environmental engineer at the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, said there no plans to reinstate PrintSTEP in Missouri, but they are looking at various innovative concepts that were a part of the program and figuring out how best to employ them. Some of the approaches were sector-based, assistance-oriented and targeted mainly to smaller companies and to improve neighborhood awareness.
“To have states take a PrintSTEP approach to environmental regulation would take a concerted effort by the industry associations working with their federal and state environmental agencies, economic development agencies, environmental advocate organizations, the legislature and most important, their member companies,” Crawford said.
Since the PrintSTEP pilots ended, another approach called the Environmental Results Program has been implemented to handle confusing environmental regulations. ERP combines compliance assistance, self-audit/certification and statistically-based inspections and performance measurement to strengthen or replace an existing regulatory structure. Printers, including small-to-medium size commercial and personal printing facilities in Massachusetts and Wisconsin have implemented this program.
Conclusion
This is meant to act as a starting point for thinking about corporate social responsibility. Refer to federal, state and local governments and online resources to meet or exceed compliance obligations. Financially, going green costs the same or a little more than doing business as usual, but when you take the public benefits into account, it is the right choice to make.
