Sustainable Green Printing

 What is green printing?

Green printing is the practice of using renewable energy resources, reducing the use of energy and greenhouse emissions, and using recycled materials. For example, a printing service may use recycled paper to print their products.

Green company products are expensive?

There’s a connotation that because a company is green the product is more expensive. That’s not necessarily the case. If you look at the underlying philosophy behind converting to green printing: waste reduction, speedier processes, and longer-lasting, non-toxic consumables, those benefits translate into competitive savings green companies can then pass on to the customer. 

Often, green printing companies are able to charge less than traditional companies while delivering a superior product. While being better for the environment.

It takes a small commitment on your part, but the return on investment from switching to an environmentally-friendly printer like Greener Printer is massive.

The first step is paper

Do you know it takes a good  24 sized tree to produce a ton of virgin fiber paper?

The paper manufacturing industry is one of the hazardous industries which is destroying countless acres of wildlife and churning out literal tons of waste.

But what can we do to stop this kind of waste? How can we counter this?

It's very simple and easy we all can use recycled paper in place of virgin paper. 

The traditional ink used in the printer is very harmful. But when we talk about Green Printers, it uses soy and vegetable-based inks which are less harmful to the environment than petroleum-based inks.

What are the components that traditional printers use that green printers don’t? 

Petroleum-based compounds that have between 25-35% of things are called VOCs (volatile organic compounds). The problem with these compounds? They’ve been linked with detrimental health effects like, “eye, nose, and throat irritation; headaches, loss of coordination, nausea; and damage to the liver, kidney, and central nervous system. Some organics can cause cancer in animals; some are suspected or known to cause cancer in humans.” Whereas Green printers often use vegetable compounds that have 0% VOC content.

Let's talk about Carbon Footprint

Until our future turns all Elon Muskian that is we all start using transportation that runs on renewable resources, we'll need to burn gasoline (petroleum). The excessive use of petroleum raises the carbon footprint.

Let's talk, how green printing companies counter this issue!

These companies make investments in Carbon Fund to offset their carbon footprint. Not only that, some companies like Greener Printer (United States of America) buy their electricity from MCE, a local San Francisco provider of 100% renewable energy. This actually lowers the overall cost, allowing green companies to pass on further savings to their customers.

The holistic overview

  

There’s another certification, printing companies (well, all companies) can get called a b-corp certification. You might be asking why this is important — it’s important because b-corps are exclusively businesses that met the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose. Because of these high standards, b-corps form a community of leaders and drive a global movement of people using business as a force for good.

 

Benefits! Partnering with a company like this is not only good because you know you’re working with reputable businesses, it’s something you can talk about with potential customers of your own. Saying you work exclusively with a b-corp printer is a boon in that regard.

Then, just because I thought it was cool, some companies actually have eco-audit tabs to see exactly how much you’ve contributed to the environment by working with them.

Summary

I would like to conclude green printing companies like Greener Printer use 100% recycled paper. They’re Green-e certified and FSC certified. They use vegetable and soy-based inks, with added ink recycling programs that help protect the environment by not contributing to VOC pollution. For offset printing, they use non-toxic processing fluids and recyclable aluminum plates. For printing, they use chem-free processing fluids, and their offset printing cuts waste by 75%. The delivery is green — they use recycled packaging and offset the shipping carbon footprint through investments in Carbon Fund.

This contributes to:

Having affordable paper products
Receiving high-quality materials
Working with reputable, admirable companies
Protecting the environment
Using safer companies with less toxic chemicals

Going green takes very little effort on your part, but companies like you have helped green printing companies reach numbers like this — in 2017 alone, Greener Printer saved:

1,466 MBTU’s of energy
3,264 fully-grown trees
1.5 million gallons of water
102,133 lbs of solid waste
281,301 lbs of greenhouse gases

 Let's change our little things and take a step toward green.