Green Printer Blog

A www.greenprinteronline.com dispatch.

Myth no. 1: The paper production industry is low on the GHG emitter totem pole.
Not so, actually the paper and pulp industry is the third largest polluter in both Canada and the United States. The Green Press Initiative (GPI) states that one of the biggest benefits of using recycled fiber is that it emits 38 percent less GHGs. Recycled fiber also uses 44 percent less energy to produce, and conserves up to 34 mature trees for every ton replacing virgin fiber.
Read the rest of this entry »

A Green Printer dispatch.

This week, greenwash fatigued bloggers (Gawker describes it as improbable a real news item as ‘the hot dog industry going vegetarian’) and non-profit spokespersons turned a skeptical eye on a group of direct marketing companies called the Green Marketing Coalition (GMC). Corporate clients, including Microsoft, Washington Mutual and OptimaHealth, are also in on the initiative.

GMC’s goal? Altruistic enough. According to the New York Times article “Direct marketing goes green. No, really”, these marketers are joining hands and taking small, albeit very conservative, steps to make an inherently unsustainable practice (i.e. sending wads of personal junk mail) at least a little bit greener. We have already written about junk mail solutions and naughty, catalogue-sending companies before and so we were curious about what best practices the industry funded group came up with. Read the rest of this entry »

A Green Printer dispatch.

Mandy Haggith with the ‘paper mountain’ she built to show what a year’s waste looks like. Photo by Angus Bruce, The Independent.

“The paperless-society goal is a very nice and noble one,” said Arpad Horvath, an associate professor at the University of California-Berkeley who has studied the issue of replacing paper with wireless technologies. “Unfortunately, I don’t see any trace of progress toward it.” Read the rest of this entry »

A Green Printer dispatch.

According to Patricia Calkins, Xerox vice-president for Environment, Health and Safety, being smarter about paper use is a win for the environment and for the bottom line, so it is no surprise businesses would zero in on improving their performance in that area.

While long an “evangelist” for greener operations, Xerox is, at its core, a global document management company, which manufactures and sells a range of color and black-and-white printers, multifunction systems, digital production printing presses, and related consulting services and supplies.

And so, the question that Jeff McIntire-Strasburg asked in April still hovers: “can a company that manufactures copy machines, and sells more paper than any other single brand, really walk the talk on sustainable business practices?” Read the rest of this entry »

A www.greenprinteronline.com dispatch.

What does a leader in business that moves us “far, fast” towards our sustainability goals look like? It’s a relevant question to our pressing need for solutions and Nicola Acutt, Ph.D. writes a “bang on” response to it.

Borrowing from a recent Al Gore speech, Accult asserts that “as people grasp the magnitude and speed of change needed to address the environmental, social and economic issues that we face, there is a growing need for leaders who take us ‘far, fast’”. Read the rest of this entry »

A www.greenprinteronline.com dispatch.

A few weeks back, I was writing about CO2-friendly supply chains and saw the hefty list of U.S. companies that the Environmental Defense Fund had helped switch to recycled content in a drive to reduce paper waste across the nation.

Now, paper is back under the public eye in fuller force than ever because of its significant climate change footprint.
“Paper is a tremendously resource-intensive product to produce,” explains project manager Victoria Mills, “and the decomposition of paper in landfills generates methane, a greenhouse gas with 23 times the heat-trapping power of carbon dioxide.” Read the rest of this entry »

A www.greenprinteronline.com dispatch

For all those days when you believe your green values aren’t aligned with your workplace but you can’t – or don’t want to – make the eco-entrepreneur step, here are some immediate action steps to try out at the office this Monday.

Remember: while many green teams start from humble beginnings, they can grow exponentially – pent up passion for green amongst employees can be powerful driving force. Read the rest of this entry »

Image source: it all skyrocketed with Gutenberg‘s printing press…

A Green Printer dispatch.

Ever wondered how much energy and thought it took to produce that shiny brochure your marketing staff handed to you this week? And no, it’s not just the brand and visual design genius we’re talking about.

Let’s face it: making a few pieces of paper look pretty takes up some pretty hefty resources and the paper and pulp industry is there to meet our paper hungry needs (so much for the paperless office). Read the rest of this entry »

Image source: National Geographic

A short, weekly “school of hard knocks” history of why paper supply chain management is not as easy as it looks – but can be. A Green Printer dispatch.

Deforestation hurts. Just ask Harrison Ford – he waxed his chest and demonstrated just how close forests are to his heart.

Sustainable management of forests, not simply trees or more recycling, is what Rainforest Alliance‘s executive director Tensie Whelan recently advocated for in GreenBiz and she’s right: while recycling has its environmental limits, sustainably managed forests as a whole ensure the well-being of the forest ecosystem and biodiversity survival for generations to come. Read the rest of this entry »

A Green Printer dispatch.

Today, I sat in at an insurance board of trade luncheon conference to learn about the value of investing in our nation’s sewage and water infrastructure as a means to deal with the havoc climate change could wrought on our nation’s coastal communities.

Apparently, history has shown that access to clean water is the first thing to go down in several weather, flooding and tidal storms. Translation: we could be scrambling for bottles of water if our government does not get to upgrading our current system up to par. Read the rest of this entry »