Laurel Brunner
Marks & Spencer, a global retailer best known for knickers, socks and divine foods, has recently reported on progress with its Plan A. The 107 environmental commitments enshrined in this plan were originally outlined in 2014, with a goal of achieving them all by 2025. So far 64 have been achieved with a further 25 on track, 11 lagging and six apparently abandoned. The global graphics industry has many reasons to engage with Marks & Spencer from signage and packaging, through to commercial print applications, so being aware of Plan A might help when bidding for new business or striving to hold on to existing work.
The Plan includes social as well as environmental goals, and this has meant that 80% of the company’s products can now be deemed to have an enhanced ecological or ethical quality. Marks & Spencer has trained over 800,000 people in its supply chain to comply with Plan A goals and has reduced overall waste by 28%. It has announced that all electricity the company uses comes from renewable sources and that 27% of its gas consumption has been replaced with bio-methane. Marks & Spencer operates as zero waste to landfill business and is the only major retailer in the UK that is carbon neutral.
But where in all this is print? Plan A does not include much information about how Marks & Spencer is managing print buying operations, so that the print they invest in is more environmentally friendly. But it does say in Plan A that “we will be ensuring that all the packaging we put on the market is easy to recycle”. Note the future tense. This is an excellent reason for graphics professionals, including designers and printers, to prick up their ears. Design is more important for packaging than for almost any graphics application, so helping Marks & Spencer to fulfil this part of Plan A will require materials and ink awareness, as well as an understanding of different print processes.
Retailers are the first line of attack when it comes to improving environmental impact awareness, so it is fantastic that Marks & Spencer is working to such an ambitious plan. Successful partnering with companies like this will be a powerful means of improving print’s environmental accountability. Partnering to achieve common goals is also a means of helping large print buyers to manage their own environmental aspects, especially those associated with print.
Laurel Brunner
This article was produced by the Verdigris project, an industry initiative intended to raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. This weekly commentary helps printing companies keep up to date with environmental standards, and how environmentally friendly business management can help improve their bottom lines. Verdigris is supported by the following companies: Agfa Graphics, EFI, Fespa, HP, Kodak, Kornit, Ricoh, Spindrift, Unity Publishing and Xeikon.
The work on ISO 21331, the ISO standard for assessing the deinkability potential of printed matter, is mired in industry politics. However the market really doesn’t care a jot and is moving on regardless. This is a problem for the maneuvering politicians in the paper industry, because it means that the market is shifting further away from current practises. The most visible example of this is the work digital press manufacturers are doing on deinking. There are now at least six digital press manufacturers working on new approaches to deinking in order to ensure that digital prints are recyclable.
The politics surrounding ISO 21331 are all about protecting the existing deinking model for conventional offset and toner based digital printing. The paper industry’s preferred method was developed decades ago and wholly unsuitable for many digital prints or for flexo printing. Outpaced and outmoded, it is being rapidly overtaken by developments in the graphics industry.
A small group of developers, the Digital Printing Deinking Alliance, is in the vanguard for new approaches to the deinking of digital prints. Two additional developers of digital press technologies, EFI and Landa, have now stated that they are working on new deinking methods for digital prints. EFI recently provided a bit more detail about their work. The company has established a dedicated development group in the USA to work with Western Michigan University (WMU) which has been working on deinking for many years, not only with paper but for textiles as well. Developers are working on ink chemistries that can be removed from the printed surface under certain chemical and physical conditions, and EFI is very pleased with the progress it is making with inks for the Nozomi C18000 digital press. The Nozomi is used in packaging plants to print liners for corrugated packaging production. The prints are deinkable in the lab and EFI is also seeing good results working with the Nozomi’s first customers. Hinojosa, a large converter in Spain, uses the WMU method and is able to ensure the repulpability and recyclability of the digitally printed corrugated boxes for its customers.
This is just the first of many such developments we can expect in the coming months. Deinking is a fundamental part of recycling and it is vital for the environmental that digitally printed matter can be returned to the economy as raw materials. As for ISO 21331, it will eventually emerge in the market where it will encourage press manufacturers, printers and print buyers to opt for print not least because it can be recycled. How long it takes depends on how sensible the paper industry will be as the graphics industry changes.
Laurel Brunner
This article was produced by the Verdigris project, an industry initiative intended to raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. This weekly commentary helps printing companies keep up to date with environmental standards, and how environmentally friendly business management can help improve their bottom lines. Verdigris is supported by the following companies: Agfa Graphics, EFI, Fespa, HP, Kodak, Kornit, Ricoh, Spindrift, Unity Publishing and Xeikon.
Lees verder....The work on ISO 21331, the ISO standard for assessing the deinkability potential of printed matter, is mired in industry politics. However the market really doesn’t care a jot and is moving on regardless. This is a problem for the maneuvering politicians in the paper industry because it means that the market is shifting further away from current practises. The most visible example of this is the work digital press manufacturers are doing on deinking. There are now at least six digital press manufacturers working on new approaches to deinking in order to ensure that digital prints are recyclable.
The politics surrounding ISO 21331 are all about protecting the existing deinking model for conventional offset and toner based digital printing. The paper industry’s preferred method was developed decades ago and wholly unsuitable for many digital prints or for flexo printing. Outpaced and outmoded, it is being rapidly overtaken by developments in the graphics industry.
A small group of developers, the Digital Printing Deinkng Alliance, is in the vanguard for new approaches to the deinking of digital prints. Two additional developers of digital press technologies, EFI and Landa, have now stated that they are working on new deinking methods for digital prints. EFI recently provided a bit more detail about their work. The company has established a dedicated development group in the USA to work with Western Michigan University (WMU) which has been working on deinking for many years, not only with paper but for textiles as well. Developers are working on ink chemistries that can be removed from the printed surface under certain chemical and physical conditions and EFI is very pleased with the progress it is making with inks for the Nozomi C18000 digital press. The Nozomi is used in packaging plants to print liners for corrugated packaging production. The prints are deinkable in the lab and EFI is also seeing good results working with the Nozomi’s first customers. Hinojosa, a large converter in Spain, uses the WMU method and is able to ensure the repulpability and recyclability of the digitally printed corrugated boxes for its customers.
This is just the first of many such developments we can expect in the coming months. Deinking is a fundamental part of recycling and it is vital for the environmental that digitally printed matter can be returned to the economy as raw materials. As for ISO 21331, it will eventually emerge in the market where it will encourage press manufacturers, printers and print buyers to opt for print not least because it can be recycled. How long it takes depends on how sensible the paper industry will be as the graphics industry changes.
Laurel Brunner
This article was produced by the Verdigris project, an industry initiative intended to raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. This weekly commentary helps printing companies keep up to date with environmental standards, and how environmentally friendly business management can help improve their bottom lines. Verdigris is supported by the following companies: Agfa Graphics, EFI, Fespa, HP, Kodak, Kornit, Ricoh, Spindrift, Unity Publishing and Xeikon.
Lees verder....Efforts to improve the environmental footprint of print take many forms. However the only ones likely to make a difference generally coincide with commercial interests. Owners of such efforts are in a slippery position in that they potentially lay themselves open to charges of greenwashing and exploitation, no matter how sincere their offerings. But even if greenwashing is often the case, it’s not necessarily a bad thing, because it can still encourage debate and interaction. This helps break down perceived barriers separating commercial interests and environmentalism. The two are not mutually exclusive, wherever you sit on the environmental spectrum.
Industry initiatives, such as Printreleaf’s efforts to create a global sustainability standard, are a case in point. Printreleaf started life in the managed print services sector, providing carbon offsetting services based on the amounts of paper used for print. Printreleaf provide certified reforestation to compensate for the amounts of paper used for print media projects. The company works with SGS International, an independent certification body with a worldwide presence, and which provides the certifications.
Printreleaf claims that around the world it now plants eight trees per minute. It has expanded its remit to include customers in the commercial and packaging print sectors. Both the forestry organisation and specific replanting schemes have to be certified. Organisations are audited to check that they know their forestry, have transparent reporting procedures, are financially healthy and, crucially, that they have the right to plant trees on a given patch of land. Evidence of proper site management is also required along with compliance to the Printreleaf standard. This requires that printing companies measuring how much paper is use based on the Printreleaf Exchange (PRX) calculation methodology. The results of the PRX calculation determine how many trees are to be planted by members of the SGS worldwide network of partners. Printreleaf calculates that 8,333 US Letter pages or 37.16 kg is the equivalent of one “standard” tree. This is a tree that grows to 12 metres high and roughly 200 cm wide. SGS audits forests to verify that the trees planted survive.
Later this year PrintReleaf is introducing new software at Print 2017, a major exhibition in the USA, to help brands and print buyers to perform their own calculations. Printers can use this software to measure customers’ environmental performance and how well or otherwise they meet specific goals. This idea seems to be much more credible than carbon offsetting schemes, in that there is a direct link between printing companies and tree planting. And if Printreleaf and SGS can build a viable revenue stream on the back of it, so much the better because environmental protection and commerce are inextricably entwined.
Laurel Brunner
This article was produced by the Verdigris project, an industry initiative intended to raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. This weekly commentary helps printing companies keep up to date with environmental standards, and how environmentally friendly business management can help improve their bottom lines. Verdigris is supported by the following companies: Agfa Graphics, EFI, Fespa, HP, Kodak, Kornit,Ricoh, Spindrift, Unity Publishing and Xeikon.
Lees verder....
Efforts to improve the environmental footprint of print take many forms. However the only ones likely to make a difference generally coincide with commercial interests. Owners of such efforts are in a slippery position in that they potentially lay themselves open to charges of greenwashing and exploitation, no matter how sincere their offerings. But even if greenwashing is often the case, it’s not necessarily a bad thing because it can still encourage debate and interaction. This helps break down perceived barriers separating commercial interests and environmentalism. The two are not mutually exclusive, wherever you sit on the environmental spectrum.
Industry initiatives such as Printreleaf’s efforts to create a global sustainability standard are a case in point. Printreleaf started life in the managed print services sector, providing carbon offsetting services based on the amounts of paper used for print. Printreleaf provide certified reforestation to compensate for the amounts of paper used for print media projects. The company works with SGS International, an independent certification body with a worldwide presence, and which provides the certifications.
Printreleaf claims that around the world it now plants eight trees per minute. It has expanded its remit to include customers in the commercial and packaging print sectors. Both the forestry organisation and specific replanting schemes have to be certified. Organisations are audited to check that they know their forestry, have transparent reporting procedures, are financially healthy and, crucially, that they have the right to plant trees on a given patch of land. Evidence of proper site management is also required along with compliance to the Printreleaf standard. This requires that printing companies measuring how much paper is use based on the Printreleaf Exchange (PRX) calculation methodology. The results of the PRX calculation determine how many trees are to be planted by members of the SGS worldwide network of partners. Printreleaf calculates that 8,333 US Letter pages or 37.16 kg is the equivalent of one “standard” tree. This is a tree that grows to 12 metres high and roughly 200 cm wide. SGS audits forests to verify that the trees planted survive.
Later this year PrintReleaf is introducing new software at Print 2017, a major exhibition in the USA, to help brands and print buyers to perform their own calculations. Printers can use this software to measure customers’ environmental performance and how well or otherwise they meet specific goals. This idea seems to be much more credible than carbon offsetting schemes, in that there is a direct link between printing companies and tree planting. And if Printreleaf and SGS can build a viable revenue stream on the back of it, so much the better because environmental protection and commerce are inextricably entwined.
Laurel Brunner
This article was produced by the Verdigris project, an industry initiative intended to raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. This weekly commentary helps printing companies keep up to date with environmental standards, and how environmentally friendly business management can help improve their bottom lines. Verdigris is supported by the following companies: Agfa Graphics, EFI, Fespa, HP, Kodak, Kornit,Ricoh, Spindrift, Unity Publishing and Xeikon.
Lees verder....
There are plenty of organisations offering to sell you an ecolabel of some description. But many of these are self-certified labels that actually have little meaning. Their adjudicators are happy to take your money, but do little to make any real difference to the environmental impact of products and services. It’s only cosmetic and it’s the worst kind of greenwash, because the monies paid are rarely invested into developing the tools to improve environmental impacts. Apart from FSC and PEFC chain of custody certifications for wood based products, there are no sector specific labels for graphics products and services. However the major ecolabels for the most part specify requirements for print.
Most environmental labels share a common origin in that they have been developed in response to a growing concern for the planet. Businesses initially went for green rhetoric in response to consumer concerns for the environmental impact of human activities. Over the years the tsunami of greenwash has abated and environmental awareness is no longer the preserve of hippies and tree-huggers. Mitigating environmental impact is now of widespread and real concern across industrial sectors. But the treehuggers legacy is in part the reason why print is still condemned as being environmentally malign: it produces obvious and visible waste. As recycling has become the norm in developed economies the negative view of print is fading, but the message persists which is why ecolabels are important.
Ecolabels differ in terms of their authority and strength. The most robust of them are offered by members of the Global Ecolabelling Network (GEN). This is a nonprofit group of environmental organisations from around the world founded in 1994. GEN was set up to promote and develop ecolabelling for products and services, to recognise those which were notably green and sustainable. The organisation has 27 members offering voluntary ecolabelling programmes that address multiple criteria. These programmes are transparent and third-parties do the certifications that allow a company to use a particular ecolabel. The third party certification is what separates GEN ecolabels from the mostly-greenwashing herd, because their ecolabels are not tied to consulting or other services. GEN members include the Blue Angel in Germany and the European Union’s Ecolabel.
We are still some ways away from having dedicated ecolabels for the graphics industry, but we are working on it. In the meantime GEN members offer suitable possibilities.
Laurel Brunner
This article was produced by the Verdigris project, an industry initiative intended to raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. This weekly commentary helps printing companies keep up to date with environmental standards, and how environmentally friendly business management can help improve their bottom lines. Verdigris is supported by the following companies: Agfa Graphics, EFI, Fespa, HP, Kodak, Kornit,Ricoh, Spindrift, Unity Publishing and Xeikon.
Lees verder....There are plenty of organisations offering to sell you an ecolabel of some description. But many of these are self-certified labels that actually have little meaning. Their adjudicators are happy to take your money, but do little to make any real difference to the environmental impact of products and services. It’s only cosmetic and it’s the worst kind of greenwash, because the monies paid are rarely invested into developing the tools to improve environmental impacts. Apart from FSC and PEFC chain of custody certifications for wood based products, there are no sector specific labels for graphics products and services. However the major ecolabels for the most part specify requirements for print.
Most environmental labels share a common origin in that they have been developed in response to a growing concern for the planet. Businesses initially went for green rhetoric in response to consumer concerns for the environmental impact of human activities. Over the years the tsunami of greenwash has abated and environmental awareness is no longer the preserve of hippies and treehuggers. Mitigating environmental impact is now of widespread and real concern across industrial sectors. But the treehuggers legacy is in part the reason why print is still condemned as being environmentally malign: it produces obvious and visible waste. As recycling has become the norm in developed economies the negative view of print is fading, but the message persists which is why ecolabels are important.
Ecolabels differ in terms of their authority and strength. The most robust of them are offered by members of the Global Ecolabelling Network (GEN). This is a nonprofit group of environmental organisations from around the world founded in 1994. GEN was set up to promote and develop ecolabelling for products and services, to recognise those which were notably green and sustainable. The organisation has 27 members offering voluntary ecolabelling programmes that address multiple criteria. These programmes are transparent and third-parties do the certifications that allow a company to use a particular ecolabel. The third party certification is what separates GEN ecolabels from the mostly-greenwashing herd, because their ecolabels are not tied to consulting or other services. GEN members include the Blue Angel in Germany and the European Union’s Ecolabel.
We are still some ways away from having dedicated ecolabels for the graphics industry, but we are working on it. In the meantime GEN members offer suitable possibilities.
Laurel Brunner
This article was produced by the Verdigris project, an industry initiative intended to raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. This weekly commentary helps printing companies keep up to date with environmental standards, and how environmentally friendly business management can help improve their bottom lines. Verdigris is supported by the following companies: Agfa Graphics, EFI, Fespa, HP, Kodak, Kornit,Ricoh, Spindrift, Unity Publishing and Xeikon.
Lees verder....
Working out if it’s better for the planet to communicate in print, or to do it digitally just got easier, sort of. ISO standards developers working on documents for graphics technologies, have written a document for calculating the carbon footprint of electronic media. ISO 20294 is moving into the final stages of its development and is expected to be with ISO to ready for final publication by the end of the year. This is by no means a definitive piece of work, but it is hoped that it will encourage better appreciation of the environmental impact of digital media. At best it’s a start, but you don’t get anywhere without making a start.
The ISO process is robust because standards are subjected to regular reviews. It is in the review process that experts are able to feedback to standards writers the market response to their work. In the case of ISO 20294, this is especially important because there is such a dearth of knowledge related to data usage for electronic media. It’s a work in process.
Although the carbon footprint of an e-book is relatively low for the e-book itself, unlike print its support and usage carry a load because the e-book can only be read using some sort of electronic device. How much of a load can be ascribed to a particular e-book is unclear, but the device’s contribution can be quantified. With ISO 20294 we should be able to start collecting data that allows us to be more precise, particularly when it comes to allocating data loads across servers and devices.
It’s too soon to know how this document will be used, but it is clear that it will be useful for carbon footprinting calculations. It will be suitable for comparing digital media’s carbon footprints with those of print, calculated according to its companion document for printed matter, ISO 16759.
These two standards follow the same basic principles and both include requirements stipulating what has to be included in the calculation method. ISO 20294 includes multicriteria calculations based on four fundamental Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) phases, although LCA is out of scope for ISO 16759. The four phases in an LCA are defining the goal and scope of the study; creating an inventory of everything to be evaluated; an impact assessment phase, and an interpretation phase. None of these is simple and all place a considerable burden on whomever is doing the calculations, so for ISO 20294 it’s important to get maximum feedback from the market.
The other important consideration for this document is its implementation, particularly as consumers and business owners are starting to ask questions relating to data loads for the internet. Storing electronic media carries a load but it is not clear how we can allocate values across media files and on what basis that allocation should be made. Obscure and rarely downloaded publications may only be stored on a handful of servers and their users’ desktops. Blockbuster movies however not only require many terabytes of storage and back up, they are also likely to be accessed by many people and probably quite often. With ISO 20294 calculating the carbon footprint of a hugely popular movie will follow the same standardised process as for calculating the carbon footprint of a less popular digital treatise. They both follow the same process, so we will be able to start gathering data within the next year or so. This will be another step forward in the environmental accountability of graphics technology.
Laurel Brunner
This article was produced by the Verdigris project, an industry initiative intended to raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. This weekly commentary helps printing companies keep up to date with environmental standards, and how environmentally friendly business management can help improve their bottom lines. Verdigris is supported by the following companies: Agfa Graphics, EFI, Fespa, HP, Kodak, Kornit, Ricoh,Spindrift, Unity Publishing and Xeikon.
Working out if it’s better for the planet to communicate in print, or to do it digitally just got easier, sort of. ISO standards developers working on documents for graphics technologies, have written a document for calculating the carbon footprint of electronic media. ISO 20294 is moving into the final stages of its development and is expected to be with ISO to ready for final publication by the end of the year. This is by no means a definitive piece of work, but it is hoped that it will encourage better appreciation of the environmental impact of digital media. At best it’s a start, but you don’t get anywhere without making a start.
The ISO process is robust because standards are subjected to regular reviews. It is in the review process that experts are able to feedback to standards writers the market response to their work. In the case of ISO 20294, this is especially important because there is such a dearth of knowledge related to data usage for electronic media. It’s a work in process.
Although the carbon footprint of an e-book is relatively low for the e-book itself, unlike print its support and usage carry a load because the e-book can only be read using some sort of electronic device. How much of a load can be ascribed to a particular e-book is unclear, but the device’s contribution can be quantified. With ISO 20294 we should be able to start collecting data that allows us to be more precise, particularly when it comes to allocating data loads across servers and devices.
It’s too soon to know how this document will be used, but it is clear that it will be useful for carbon footprinting calculations. It will be suitable for comparing digital media’s carbon footprints with those of print, calculated according to its companion document for printed matter, ISO 16759.
These two standards follow the same basic principles and both include requirements stipulating what has to be included in the calculation method. ISO 20294 includes multicriteria calculations based on four fundamental Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) phases, although LCA is out of scope for ISO 16759. The four phases in an LCA are defining the goal and scope of the study; creating an inventory of everything to be evaluated; an impact assessment phase, and an interpretation phase. None of these is simple and all place a considerable burden on whomever is doing the calculations, so for ISO 20294 it’s important to get maximum feedback from the market.
The other important consideration for this document is its implementation, particularly as consumers and business owners are starting to ask questions relating to data loads for the internet. Storing electronic media carries a load but it is not clear how we can allocate values across media files and on what basis that allocation should be made. Obscure and rarely downloaded publications may only be stored on a handful of servers and their users’ desktops. Blockbuster movies however not only require many terabytes of storage and back up, they are also likely to be accessed by many people and probably quite often. With ISO 20294 calculating the carbon footprint of a hugely popular movie will follow the same standardised process as for calculating the carbon footprint of a less popular digital treatise. They both follow the same process, so we will be able to start gathering data within the next year or so. This will be another step forward in the environmental accountability of graphics technology.
Laurel Brunner
This article was produced by the Verdigris project, an industry initiative intended to raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. This weekly commentary helps printing companies keep up to date with environmental standards, and how environmentally friendly business management can help improve their bottom lines. Verdigris is supported by the following companies: Agfa Graphics, EFI, Fespa, HP, Kodak, Kornit, Ricoh,Spindrift, Unity Publishing and Xeikon.
By all accounts the textile printing business is set to explode, thanks to digital printing technologies. For instance Fibre2fashion, analysts for the fashion industry, reckon that in 2017 the amount of fabric printed digitally will be more than one billion square metres and reach 2.5 billion square metres by 2020. They estimate that CAGR from 2015 to 2020 will be 28%, with 5% of that printed digitally, up from 2% in 2016.
We can mostly accept these numbers but there lots of reasons to be anxious about them, not least the environmental impact of such growth. Textile production is one of the heaviest when it comes to the environment, not least for the massive amounts of water required to produce fabrics, starting with processing the raw materials and all the way through to washing textiles ready for turning them into clothes.
The big driver is of course our desire for instant and inexpensive gratification. We all love to have new clothes, to change our looks, to bolster our sense of self-esteem, our vanity. And in developed markets it is very easy to get new stuff at low cost, whether it’s brand new or second-hand, bought in a shop or online. The fashion industry has of course responded brilliantly, tapping into this need and producing stylish designs at low cost with increasingly frequent new looks and lines. This inevitably increases the burden on reprocessing textiles, particularly in geographies where a throwaway mentality dominates. Digital printing could encourage desires for instant gratification and in so doing aggravate the waste problem. Or it may turn the whole model completely on its head.
This is a very real possibility because digital printing collapses manufacturing and supply chains so effectively. These days there are plenty of internet sites offering fashion and bespoke designs for clothing on demand. Just a few short years ago, this application was limited to polyester sportswear, but now you can design your own gear, get it printed on various substrates and get it delivered within a few days.
And it’s so easy to sell on clothes you get bored with via Amazon or Ebay. We need to encourage a different expectation because the quantities of textiles going to landfill is still too high and rising. In the UK for instance over one million tonnes of clothes is thrown away every year. Recycling the clothes through resale means less landfill and reduced resource usage. Two very large fashion brands are encouraging such new thinking with support for clothing recycling instore. Both Zara and H&M have bins in their stores, so that people can discard unwanted items before buying new ones. It could be chance for nonshoppers to get free new clothes and it could further prod consumers to buy more than they need, guilt free. But longer term it should help people to think more about how we should be using resources. We aren’t likely to turn away from the charms of instant gratification, but perhaps environmental thinking will be encouraged.
Laurel Brunner
This article was produced by the Verdigris project, an industry initiative intended to raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. This weekly commentary helps printing companies keep up to date with environmental standards, and how environmentally friendly business management can help improve their bottom lines. Verdigris is supported by the following companies: Agfa Graphics, EFI, Fespa, HP, Kodak, Kornit, Ricoh, Spindrift, Unity Publishing and Xeikon.
Lees verder....By all accounts the textile printing business is set to explode, thanks to digital printing technologies. For instance Fibre2fashion, analysts for the fashion industry, reckon that in 2017 the amount of fabric printed digitally will be more than one billion square metres and reach 2.5 billion square metres by 2020. They estimate that CAGR from 2015 to 2020 will be 28%, with 5% of that printed digitally, up from 2% in 2016.
We can mostly accept these numbers but there lots of reasons to be anxious about them, not least the environmental impact of such growth. Textile production is one of the heaviest when it comes to the environment, not least for the massive amounts of water required to produce fabrics, starting with processing the raw materials and all the way through to washing textiles ready for turning them into clothes.
The big driver is of course our desire for instant and inexpensive gratification. We all love to have new clothes, to change our looks, to bolster our sense of self-esteem, our vanity. And in developed markets it is very easy to get new stuff at low cost, whether it’s brand new or second-hand, bought in a shop or online. The fashion industry has of course responded brilliantly, tapping into this need and producing stylish designs at low cost with increasingly frequent new looks and lines. This inevitably increases the burden on reprocessing textiles, particularly in geographies where a throwaway mentality dominates. Digital printing could encourage desires for instant gratification and in so doing aggravate the waste problem. Or it may turn the whole model completely on its head.
This is a very real possibility because digital printing collapses manufacturing and supply chains so effectively. These days there are plenty of internet sites offering fashion and bespoke designs for clothing on demand. Just a few short years ago, this application was limited to polyester sportswear, but now you can design your own gear, get it printed on various substrates and get it delivered within a few days.
And it’s so easy to sell on clothes you get bored with via Amazon or Ebay. We need to encourage a different expectation because the quantities of textiles going to landfill is still too high and rising. In the UK for instance over one million tonnes of clothes is thrown away every year. Recycling the clothes through resale means less landfill and reduced resource usage. Two very large fashion brands are encouraging such new thinking with support for clothing recycling instore. Both Zara and H&M have bins in their stores, so that people can discard unwanted items before buying new ones. It could be chance for nonshoppers to get free new clothes and it could further prod consumers to buy more than they need, guilt free. But longer term it should help people to think more about how we should be using resources. We aren’t likely to turn away from the charms of instant gratification, but perhaps environmental thinking will be encouraged.
Laurel Brunner
This article was produced by the Verdigris project, an industry initiative intended to raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. This weekly commentary helps printing companies keep up to date with environmental standards, and how environmentally friendly business management can help improve their bottom lines. Verdigris is supported by the following companies: Agfa Graphics, EFI, Fespa, HP, Kodak, Kornit, Ricoh, Spindrift, Unity Publishing and Xeikon.
Lees verder....
The problem is not unique to digital presses, but how do you measure energy usage and the overall energy efficiency of a machine? With cars the most usual method is the miles per gallon, or how many litres of fuel it takes to travel 100 kilometres. Just in this example we can see how slippery the actual values are, how subjective. For instance do the calculations accurately take into account traffic, hills, darkness or temperature? The problem with energy calculations is that there are so many variables involved. The data on which the averaged result is based is likely to be deeply buried, so using the result in a meaningful way won’t be easy or convenient.
A digital press is designed and configured for particular target applications, but it can also be used for other purposes once installed. Transactional devices get used for book printing or sign making, for example, so there is no such thing as a generic digital press. These printers use different inks and imaging technologies and they print at different speeds. Achieving an acceptable print, one that can be sold, may depend on other processes which are not connected to the digital press, as happens with packaging print or textile production. In the case of textiles the print produced on a dye sublimation machine has to be calendared in a high energy process requiring heat and pressure. A packaging press doesn’t necessarily print packages, but merely their visual appearance and structural components. Without finishing, the packaging print is just prints. In both of these cases, it makes more sense to measure the energy usage of the system, rather than just of the press.
Things are less complicated for sign and display production using digital presses. The prints are for the most part ready to go. There may be some additional finishing, such as cutting, but mostly the print engine produces end products. The same is true for transactional print although one could argue that end products are bills in envelopes, so inserting, a finishing process of sorts, must also be included.
Whether we should be measuring the energy usage of digital presses, or of digital print media production systems, seems like a massive ask. But either way the press itself is the heart of a digital printing system, so we have to start there. We then have to ask ourselves what counts as the start of energy usage, and this is equally tricky to answer. There is a case for suggesting that measurements should not start until the printing engine is printing, rather than warming up or in stand-by mode. However at the point of starting to print there will be an atypical energy usage surge, the effect of which is minimal for most production runs. For devices that start and stop with greater frequency, the impact of the surge energy on the overall energy usage will be proportionally higher so its contribution is not negligible.
Standard energy usage calculations for digital presses assumes that there are standard digital presses and standard print applications, which there clearly aren’t. How we measure energy usage may to some extent depend on why we measure it and how results are used.
Laurel Brunner
This article was produced by the Verdigris project, an industry initiative intended to raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. This weekly commentary helps printing companies keep up to date with environmental standards, and how environmentally friendly business management can help improve their bottom lines. Verdigris is supported by the following companies: Agfa Graphics, EFI, Epson, Fespa, HP, Kodak, Kornit, Ricoh, Spindrift, Unity Publishing and Xeikon.
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