environmental Strategist, between the lines: For those who work with or are associated with the printing industry, www.estrategist.com offers the following competitive environmental intelligence.
The article “Press Relations, How green printing can make a good impression”, supports what environmental Strategist have been showing clients for years, by developing and executing a proactive environmental Management Strategy (eMS) a business learns how to produce a better product/service while increasing profits. In this case it works for both the printer and their customer.
As the author points out, a green printer worth its salt will help you find ways to make projects more economical. “We spend a lot of time educating customers to show them that green printing isn’t just more environmentally responsible, it’s often better quality and more affordable,” says Josh Maddox, sales manager at GreenerPrinter. “By taking the time to show them the least wasteful way to design and produce [projects], we often save clients money over conventional printing costs. We win a lot of business that way.” It sounds to me like successful printers are operating from a TEAM SPORT strategy.
I have also included a Pollution Prevention Checklist For Lithographic Printers. Share this competitive environmental intelligence as support for why you are indispensable.
This information should be used by both printers and those who contractwith printing services. Part of any eMS is to find out, who are you doing business with?
Press Relations
How green printing can make a good impression
By Joel Makower
03 Jan 2006
Look around your workplace, and you’ll likely find plenty of printed material, from business cards to brochures to books. Printing words and images on paper may seem like one of the more environmentally benign things your company does, but that isn’t necessarily the case. If you examine the life cycle of printed matter — from turning trees into paper through the witch’s brew of chemicals involved — professional printing takes on a decidedly non-green hue.
The explosion of web and digital technology doesn’t seem to have changed things — as one pundit put it, the paperless office has turned out to be about as practical as the paperless bathroom. But if you still have to print, go green.
Green printing is on a roll, moving beyond small, do-good companies and activist groups to larger corporations and government agencies that have mandates to purchase greener goods and services. As demand for green printing has grown, so too has the number of printers offering such services — or, at least, claiming to.
It’s about time. The mechanics of most types of printing haven’t changed much over the past half-century. Lithography and gravure — the methods typically used to print books, magazines, and catalogs — employ plates, which are used to apply ink to paper. Typically, the process involves a variety of inks, solvents, acids, resins, lacquers, dyes, driers, extenders, modifiers, varnishes, shellacs, and other solutions. Only a few of these ingredients end up directly on the printed page. The balance are used to produce films, printing plates, gravure cylinders, or proofs, or to clean printing plates or presses.
Many of the ingredients are toxic: silver, lead, chromium, cadmium, toluene, chloroform, methylene chloride, barium-based pigments, and acrylic copolymers. And that’s not all. Chlorine bleaching of paper is linked to cancer-causing water pollutants. Waste inks and solvents are usually considered hazardous. Bindings, adhesives, foils, and plastic bags used in printing or packaging printed material can render paper unrecyclable.
And you thought it was just ink on paper.
I Ink, Therefore I Am
Not everyone defines “green printing” the same way, and there is no standard or certification for what makes a printer — or a given project — green. For example, some printers use conventional techniques for most customers, breaking out the recycled paper and soy-based inks only when a customer asks. But others go all-out as a matter of course.
Among those in the latter category is GreenerPrinter, based in Berkeley, Calif., whose customers include Clif Bar & Co., Hewlett Packard, and the San Francisco Giants. The company uses high post-consumer recycled content, non-chlorine-bleached papers from New Leaf, one of the leading environmental paper companies. GreenerPrinter customers can receive an “environmental benefits statement” detailing the water, energy, and emissions saved for a given print job. And the climate impact of shipping finished jobs is offset through investments in renewable energy. (Full disclosure: GreenBiz.com, the nonprofit website I founded, has an affiliate relationship with GreenerPrinter.)
Then there’s Quad/Graphics, one of the nation’s largest printers, with more than 12,000 employees. For more than 30 years, Quad, based in Sussex, Wis., has been a pioneer in green-printing practices, from reducing ink and paper waste to making sure print-shop air quality far surpasses legal guidelines. The company recycles more than 98 percent of its waste and has won numerous awards for environmental leadership, though it doesn’t market itself as a “green” printer.
It’s not hard to suss out who’s green and who’s not, says Priscilla Martin, print buyer for Clif Bar. “When speaking with a new potential vendor, their views or positions on environmental considerations are generally apparent within the first few minutes,” she says. “If I’m not hearing a green message, rather than asking about it, I tell them what is important to us and see how they respond.”
And what about price? Green printing can cost a little more — but it doesn’t have to. The major trade-off we thought we’d experience was a price increase,” says Andrea Stupka, marketing and promotions manager at Homegrown Naturals, Inc., purveyor of Annie’s Homegrown products. “But after doing a cost comparison between four printers, one of them green, we were pleasantly surprised. The slight cost increase to go green was so insignificant it was worth it.”
In fact, a green printer worth its salt will help you find ways to make projects more economical. “We spend a lot of time educating customers to show them that green printing isn’t just more environmentally responsible, it’s often better quality and more affordable,” says Josh Maddox, sales manager at GreenerPrinter. “By taking the time to show them the least wasteful way to design and produce [projects], we often save clients money over conventional printing costs. We win a lot of business that way.”
Image Consciousness
So how do you make your printing greener? Since there’s no official standard, you’re on your own to determine who’s really committed. In general, an environmentally minded printer should: use the most eco-friendly papers available; reduce or eliminate toxic chemicals, waste ink, and solvents; be willing to use soy or other vegetable inks without any price premium; educate customers about how to reduce a project’s environmental impact; and provide safe working conditions for employees, including using the most advanced air-filtration systems.
Here are three questions to ask when scoping out your particular job:
1. Can the job be printed on paper containing a high percentage of post-consumer recycled fiber?
The answer will help determine whether the printer has practical knowledge about the characteristics and advantages of different types of recycled paper. Don’t just accept “sure, we can use recycled” as an answer. Specify paper with at least 50 percent post-consumer content.
2. Can it be printed with low-polluting inks?
In most jobs, soy- or vegetable-based inks work just fine (90 percent of daily newspapers use them routinely for color printing). Avoid inks containing heavy metals like lead, cadmium, and mercury, which are commonly used to produce some bright colors. Printers should be willing to swear off heavy-metal inks and suggest alternatives.
3. What is being done to improve the recyclability of the print job?
Coatings, laminates, inks, foils, adhesives, labels, and paper selection can all affect the recyclability of a printed document. A printer should be able to find alternative ways to get the desired effect — through innovative paper sizes and newer glues that won’t inhibit recycling, for example.
As with so many things green, the more you know, the better decisions you can make. In the end, the best option may be not to print at all. “It is always good to question, ‘How important is this item to print?'” says Bryan Mazzarello, art director at Organic Bouquet. “Many times companies can offer the same information online and update it cheaper and faster. Maybe a postcard invitation to the website would be more effective than a brochure that will end up in the trash.”
As Mazzarello makes clear, green printing isn’t your only option. The greenest document of all is the one you never commit to paper.
Press Here
Good resources for green printing include: GreenBiz Green Printing Resource Center, the Bay Area Green Business Program’s Top 10 Green Printing Practices, Dynamic Graphics’ Printing Green: 12 Things You Need to Know, and Environmental Considerations for the Print Buyer from the Minnesota Environmental Initiative.
What’s your toiling point? Don’t check your values at the door. Send workplace questions, challenges, ideas, and pet peeves to toilingpoint@grist.org.
Pollution Prevention Checklist For Lithographic Printers |
Printing Pressed From All Sides
Globalization may leave some printing business executives in a cold sweat. But companies with a clear vision, and a strong risk manager to oversee its deployment, see the risks as opportunities.
BY STEVE YAHN
Newly installed Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke, in his first appearance on Capitol Hill, said, with hands folded firmly on the table in front of him, that dealing with the myriad influences of globalization will be his toughest challenge.
You’ll get no disagreement on that score from risk managers and other top executives at printing industry companies–whether behemoths of the business or smaller-scale niche players.
Luc Desjardins, the president and CEO of Montreal-based Transcontinental Inc., a major North American printing and publishing company, told an industry group last fall: “Globalization has meant we’re facing increased competition from all sides, especially Asia in our case. The rise of China as a new economic power doesn’t affect us in timely niches such as printing daily newspapers or even magazines, but it’s certainly having a considerable impact on the book printing market and some commercial work around the globe.”
Disquietingly, even some of those “timely niches” are feeling the pinch. In the U.S. market, there is evidence that a growing number of newspapers are outsourcing certain kinds of work to locations outside the country.
“This is happening not just at the nationals like the New York Times and the Globe and Mail in Canada, but even some regional and more local newspapers have begun doing it,” says one well-informed source.
But the best U.S.-based printing companies view globalization as an opportunity, provided the proper strategies and most effective utilization of their resources are in place and are constantly being enhanced and advanced.
“We are a leader in investing in new technology, and we see these productivity enhancements as a means to add significant value for our customers and, therefore, successfully compete over the long-term in the ultracompetitive global commercial print market,” says Daniel J. Potter, director of tax, risk and treasury management at Quad/Graphics Inc., one of North America’s largest printers, which counts among its clients Newsweek and National Geographic magazines, as well as catalogs for such retailers as Williams-Sonoma and Victoria’s Secret.
Potter, like directors of risk and financial management at other top U.S. printing companies, sees global marketplace value in having highly coordinated, efficient risk management programs on a worldwide basis.
Observes Director of Global Risk Management Arthur B. Kordus at giant printer and supply-chain management firm Banta Corp.: “One of the main reasons we place so much emphasis on risk management is to give us a competitive advantage. We believe that having a comprehensive global business insurance and risk program increases our credibility with our customer base.”
INDUSTRY AT A CROSSROADS
In his speech to industry leaders last fall, Desjardins said, “Globalization, the foreign exchange rate, rising energy costs and–of course–the Internet’s impact are the macroeconomic factors that are adding to the changes we are all facing.”
Of those and other major waves sweeping the printing industry, no doubt the most profound one in the long run is the transformative effect of the Internet and digital technology in general on all media, but perhaps most dramatically on the world of printed products. This new and powerful form of competition is putting pressure on printing industry risk managers to play major roles in corporate strategy initiatives, to not just act in the traditional role of being mostly a cost-control defensive-platoon player–or as one risk manager wryly put it, “the keeper of the misfortune business.”
“My objectives are to make decisions and to implement strategies that are designed to protect and ultimately increase share value over the long term,” says Potter, who was with Arthur Andersen for eight years before joining Quad/Graphics. Through his Andersen experience, he developed a keen sensitivity to overall enterprise risk management.
Potter says he and his group take a “holistic” approach to identifying risk and dealing with it. “Quad/Graphics is a dynamic organization, and risk exposures, large and small, come at us quickly from all directions. We have created a cross-functional, multidimensional approach to managing these risks.”
Banta’s Kordus observes that his company has a similar battle plan–with full participation from its chairman, president and CEO, Stephanie A. Streeter, and its CFO, Geoffrey J. Hibner, who are the first people Kordus notifies in any emergency.
“There are many times in my role when you have to bring it all together in a hurry, coordinating the expertise of legal, accounting, human resources, safety and engineering,” says Kordus.
“After a severe claim is received,” he notes, “everybody has to swing into action fast, and there have to be set procedures in place that allow us to work swiftly and smoothly as a team so that an injured worker gets all the best treatment and response from the various disciplines we have. Our aim is: marshal our resources to bear on getting this person recovered and back to health and work again with the best care possible.”
At Transcontinental–which has added to its extensive printing and media ownership in Canada by making substantial acquisitions in the United States (going from only 500 employees in the States just a year and a half ago to 2,500 or so today)–Director of Risk Management Michel Rodrigue stressed the importance of getting all employees at all of the company’s locations on the same page, so to speak, when it comes to buying into the importance of risk management in general and the company’s program in particular.
Rodrigue–who was recruited in late 2003 by Transcontinental to implement and drive forward a risk management master plan created by a Canadian consulting firm–says: “Our goal is to bring the whole company to a risk management culture. My role is to help everybody understand why that is important.”
“You have to meet with people to do that,” he adds. Toward that end, Rodrigue is a frequent flyer to all of Transcontinental’s 60 plants in Mexico, the United States and throughout Canada. (A profile of Rodrigue begins on page 20.)
Despite an ongoing consolidation in the North American printing business at all levels (since 1990, there has been a 20 percent reduction of various kinds of traditional printing plants in North America), the industry remains a giant employer.
In the United States alone, it is estimated that more than 1 million people work in the industry in one way or another, versus approximately 750,000 people in the next largest group, the auto industry. In addition to traditional printing plants, Kinko’s has approximately 1,500 copying centers in the United States.
Thus, the day-in, day-out risk exposures and risk management programs have a huge impact on the economic life of North America and the safety and health of so many of its citizens.
WORKERS’ COMP LEADS EXPENSES
Of the risk exposure costs associated with the printing industry, far and away the biggest cost driver is workers’ comp.
Marsh Inc.’s most recent “Casualty Cost of Risk” report noted that, of each dollar spent by the printing/publishing industry on its primary casualty program in 2004, 77 cents was allocated to workers’ compensation, 17 cents to general liability and 6 cents to automobile liability. Claims handling in the printing industry, according to the report, was bundled for 78 percent of the loss-sensitive programs, with 22 percent unbundled. On average, the industry spent $2.53 per $1,000 of revenue on its primary-care casualty program.
According to the author of the printing section of the report, Marsh senior vice president and work-force strategies consultant Bob Frenson, the most troublesome drivers of casualty cost will remain the same when the next report is issued late this spring. “Cost drivers include employee safety and health issues, arising out of industry exposures that include material-handling, slip-and-fall incidents, and delivery operations,” Frenson wrote in the most recent report. He does, however, plan to add one new cost driver to his part of the next report: A maturing population of workers, leading to rising costs of medical coverage.
Cindy Roelke, corporate claims manager at Cenveo, Inc., a large printer of envelopes and other kinds of packaging, echoes this observation, noting that of major risk exposures facing her company, one is “an aging workforce coupled with rising healthcare costs.”
One antidote to curbing soaring medical costs is to develop relationships with 24 hour, 7-day a week medical services, notes Frenson. Many printing companies work round the clock, so planning with medical providers must address these hours of operation. If the facilities or clinics the companies use on a contract basis are not in service at night or weekends, the gate swings open on higher costs.
“Treatment for injuries in emergency rooms with whom the company has no relationship, can result in higher costs as the lack of knowledge of company jobs, conditions, and return to work programs may undermine the injury management process. compared to medical providers with which a company has established a regular relationship,” says Frenson.
Quad/Graphics, a privately held company that was just chosen by Fortune magazine as one of the “100 Best Companies to Work For” because of its outstanding benefits and unique corporate culture, has taken in-house employee medical care to a much higher–and more profitable–level. The company’s Quad/Med LLC group runs a fully staffed in-house medical unit. The group also sells the service to other companies, including operating full-service clinics for Miller Brewing Co. and Briggs & Stratton Corp.
One remedy for dealing with an aging workforce and rising medical costs is for the industry to institute early-retirement plans. “These programs have been going on for some time in the publishing industry, but they are definitely accelerating,” says Ed Atorino, a media analyst and managing director at The Benchmark Co. “Just look at the cutbacks recently at The New York Times Co., The Tribune Co. and Dow Jones.” In the auto-and-truck liability realm, the issue is whether to outsource the driving function. The industry seems to be trending toward “leave the driving to them”–that is, professional outside driving firms. “Other printers and publishers have joined forces to share delivery drivers in certain markets,” says Marsh’s Frenson.
John Morton, a newspaper industry consultant, adds another interesting delivery-cost reduction twist increasingly being used by newspapers of all sizes: shrinking their geographic delivery area footprint, sometimes dramatically, by eliminating truck delivery to outlying areas and instead offering mail-delivery service. “With the onset of corporate ownership in the newspaper business, cost-cutting has become a way of life,” says Morton, president of Morton Research Inc. in Silver Spring, Md. “Originally, a lot of the impetus for reducing circulation in general came in the mid-1990s when newsprint costs shot way up. But more recently, reducing physical circulation distribution areas has become a means of reducing costs in general”–including auto liability costs.
On the health-care costs front, Morton, who is frequently on the road visiting newspaper clients around the country, observes that “newspaper employees in the United States are a lot healthier than they used to be.”
“Now you go into a newspaper office and it looks like an insurance company,” Morton says.
STEVE YAHN contributes frequently to the magazine. He can be reached at riskletters@lrp.com.