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Question of the week 18.08.09
Posted by Creative Review, 18 August 2009, 10:42 Permalink Comments (35)
In our forthcoming September issue (out next week) we've used a variety of different paper stocks throughout the issue for different sections of the magazine. On the first page of each different section a divider explains what stock is being used - and one of the stocks, a 100% FSC certified recycled paper, was supplied with an 'environmental benefit statement' outlining the impact of using such a stock for a project: By printing 5,000 copies of an A4 brochure with a four-page cover and 12 page text on such a stock, designers could be reducing their impact as follows: 1,255 kg of landfill; 31,300 litres of water; 3,126kWh of electricity; 21 full-grown trees.
That's a big impact for a fairly small print job. Are these figures surprising - or are you, as a designer, constantly questioning the environmental impact of what you do?
Being green is now a necessity for any business that wants to be successful. So how do you go about making sure you're doing what you can in your day to day work? Is your studio or agency green? Tell us how you monitor your carbon footprint or how you reduce energy consumption. Do all of your clients take an interest in how green you are - as a business - and are they keen to ensure that the projects you work on for them are environmentally friendly?
Question of the Week is produced in association with Major Players
35 Comments
Is constantly sending me big wads of paper telling me to renew my subscription helping the environment?
2009-08-18 12:34:21
Revert Creative was founded on green principles. Each project is carbon neutral, we only use paper that is recycled or from managed sources and we only use soya inks rather than oil based for print work. Moreover we take a holistic approach looking at the way we design to see if it we can reduce paper use or cut it out altogether.
We design in a way that minimises paper volume, number of inks and use low waste binding methods. We encourage the use of waterless printing and we try to get all our projects printed near to where it is needed rather than couriering jobs across the country.
There have been clients that we have refused to work with based on their business practices and we don't offer our clients a cheap, unethical option. We also encourage our clients to use their consideration for the environment as a positive marketing strategy to show that they are ethical and caring in their business practices.
2009-08-18 12:34:26
We design things people want to keep. Our profession is one of consumerism so regardless people will consume, no matter how Eco you are. Reducing waste through keepable creation is our avenue.
2009-08-18 12:40:56
Turning off all equipment at the end of the day. I remember working at my last big corp and the open plan offices full of computers left on in the evening after everyone had gone home was astounding.
2009-08-18 13:09:43
We at Playgroup have a standard environmental policy, but want to take a step up. We are speaking to several companies about organising an environmental audit at the moment, we'll take the recommendations on board and run an internal campaign to ensure our environmental impact is reduced. Its becoming more and more and important to our clients and our employees.
2009-08-18 13:20:14
Good for you CR. We at ecocard™ are trying to green up plastic card printing with our environmentally friendly alternatives. Did you know over 99% of all plastic cards are made from PVC. Once discarded they then go straight to landfill and will not biodegrade in your lifetime or those of the next generation or the next.....
Keep up the amazing work from all at ecocard
2009-08-18 13:22:30
From my own diminishing print work, clients now expect, as default, FSC or recycled stocks. Furthering that, here at BMB Luton, we now actively seek clients who share an eco vision and doing very well as a result. We believe that people migrate towards a single mindedness. That's not to say we've gone all self sustainable and straw-toilet, but step-change bit by bit.
Aside from turning out more and more digital work instead – bypassing print altogether – our latest client EcoSheet came to us after developing a truly industry changing green innovation which is a Plywood replacement to be used for Formworks and Hoardings within the construction industry. EcoSheet is a plywood substitute made from recycled plastic which is recyclable after use, impermeable to water, requires much less release agent, can be re-used significantly more times than plywood and lighter than plywood and therefore less transport Co2.
In Summary:
Green doesn't always mean popping your print into the recycling bin, in our case, it's about seeking people who share our vision. And bringing them along with us.
Oh, and we even recycled our building from an old manure processing plant. Who said you can't polish a turd?
2009-08-18 13:46:54
I avoid wasting paper, water and electricity by seldom doing any work
2009-08-18 13:58:12
I avoid wasting paper, water and electricity by seldom doing any work
2009-08-18 13:58:40
By doing no work at all I have found that my carbon footprint has been significantly reduced.
2009-08-18 14:20:59
Quite apart from the actual work, it's a battle convincing most people in my agency of the value in specifying FSC stocks, or the value of not printing an entire document again and again on single-sided colour A3 for a single amendment. Let alone simple things like recycling. There may be a big noise in the media about 'green' but I think 90% of the population still doesn't really give a damn.
2009-08-18 14:24:04
we do our best to use a lovely eco friendly printers, recycle paper, turn the computers off and not crush up polystyrene into little snow storms. The sad thing is, that kind of half arsed activity is still considered "activity" at all. we just need to look around at the offices, at the plastic butty packaging that our council can't recycle or the reams of bleached white A4 that's the only thing available from the stationers to realise that it's all a bit half arsed and pointless. Making a conscious decision is just that, conscious and in most cases, expensive and difficult. The lack of bigger picture facilities such as proper cycle paths and storage, renewable energy as standard in public sector and recycling facilities as part of daily life a la Germany for example renders the small stuff almost irrelevant. I've just totally freaked myself out- we're all DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMEEEEDDDDDDDDDDD
2009-08-18 14:40:06
We are a Trend Forecasting and Business Transformer company dedicated to the Interiors market so environmental issues are key to our trend forecasts and key to our discussions with retail and manufacturing clients. At Scarlet Opus we seek to inform and encourage our clients to think about environmental issues and their own impact and then make positive changes for their businesses, their clients and the environment. Within our own business we have made many small and large changes that we feel help towards the cause e.g. we originally had a small fleet of big BMW's....now we have 1 company pool car and our UK studio team just have to organise their meeting schedules better and in many cases use trains....if anything it has encouraged a greater degree of consideration, organisation and communication within the business. At Scarlet Opus we use webcams, skype etc... so that more of our meetings can be conducted remotely and this has cut down our international travel to some degree. We are trying to encourage our clients to opt for our seasonal trend reports in memory card format rather than hard copies.....some are happy with that, others still want to flick through the report in paper format and just won't budge. At trade shows and exhibitions we only sell memory card versions of our trend reports though. We are really careful about switching off computers and equipment each day and only having lights turned on in areas we are working in....which obviously have energy efficient light bulbs.
2009-08-18 15:07:18
Beginning a project with a restricted view, ie one that only considers the environmental impact of my work restricts me as a designer, therefore I start from the stand point of "To hell with environment" then think ..."or should I?"
2009-08-18 15:25:45
Just reading your article and here at Locomotion we've joined the Green Achiever Scheme to help reduce our environmental impact.
2009-08-18 15:31:40
"Being green is now a necessity for any business that wants to be successful"
A *neccesity* ?
Sorry guys, are you sure?
That's a bold statement. Wish it was true.
2009-08-18 15:55:45
We use email as much as possible - invoicing, proposals and most of the time even presenting our work to clients is done over the net/on screen. Saves us time and money, and the clients don't seem to mind...
2009-08-18 16:05:57
I find recycled paper has much more character and try and spec it as much as possible.
2009-08-18 16:17:08
Using electricity generated from wind power.
Recycling all waste.
Stopped using bottled water.
Buying a bike.
2009-08-18 16:54:54
Personally, buying a bike, not driving places and occasionally recycling stuff.
Design wise I've been doing a lot more web stuff but that wasn't a conscious environmental choice.
2009-08-18 17:32:50
Quite apart from the actual work, it's a battle convincing most people in my agency of the value in specifying FSC stocks, or the value of not printing an entire document again and again on single-sided colour A3 for a single amendment. Let alone simple things like recycling. There may be a big noise in the media about 'green' but I think 90% of the population still doesn't really give a damn.
2009-08-18 17:44:50
I don't use toilet paper. I just wipe my arse on all the government's red tape and MP's expense sheets instead!
2009-08-18 18:21:29
At EggMag, we use a carbon neutral printing company, who use vegetable inks and we print on 100% recycled paper. There seem to be a lot of people who claim to be doing their bit, but then will print on 50% or less recycled paper - it's worth bearing in mind, that the virgin FSC label has caused a lot of controversy as to how the forests are being maintained and managed.
The other point is - what you are printing? Are you putting out a worthwhile message? If not, don't print! At EggMag, we are as good as we can be, as a printed 'thing' and need to be printed to get our message out there...
2009-08-18 18:31:52
I work as a junior at a (primarily) digital agency and although digital work has many environmental benefits over print, the office which we work in is far from eco-friendly.
Computers are often left on all night, there is no paper/can/etc recycling (we do use a lot of it and I've been trying to encourage them to set up a recycling system), as far as I know stationary/paper/etc are not sourced from eco-friendly suppliers and things like water coolers are unnecessary as far as I'm concerned.
When it comes down to it, the kind of clients we work with aren't concerned with these factors and so there is little in the way of incentives (besides conscience) to encourage such changes.
2009-08-18 22:11:23
By-passing print and choosing a digital option....
A digital project could be viewed by 1000 people, on 1000 individual screens, consuming energy.
One billboard poster at a bus stop could be seen by 1000 people and uses one piece of paper.
2009-08-19 01:37:49
I use the back of every scrap piece of paper. It's amazing how much of it there is!
2009-08-19 09:21:16
Having a creative business probably doesn't have the same environmental impact as other sectors but it is becoming an increasingly important issue to address. I've found that actually it is members of the general public that ask me about environmental policies and initiatives, rather than business clients.
Because of this I established and published a policy on one of my sites about what we were doing to head towards being a carbon neutral business - http://www.djc-weddings.co.uk/sustainability.html - which has been featured in a series of specialist bridal publications. All fairly obvious stuff, like using local suppliers and recycling as much as much as possible. But it's surprising that few businesses are catching on, that this can be a powerful marketing tool to customers.
People care about the environment and take that into consideration when choosing where to spend their money.
2009-08-19 10:36:29
I don't think the issues of environmental responsibilities are not as black and white as simply using recycled paper. A machine gun is no less of a danger to society if it is made out of recycled metal, and in that respect greenwashing campaigns such as Shell's 'Energy Mix' have done far 'damage' than their print run 100 times over. Conversely, work such as UHC's penknife campaign for climate camp last year have a far more positive effect on the environment regardless of the print spec. It's a shame that a lot of companies environmental policies are reactive rather than proactive, as an industry we potentially have so much influence.
2009-08-19 13:22:55
I'm not going to be a graphic designer and not going to have children (or piglets)
2009-08-19 13:54:33
i save on printing and advertising costs by posting thinly veiled promos for my company on creative discussion boards.
2009-08-19 15:37:16
I think of environmental issues at every opportunity I get, and am always very conscious of the impact I'm having on the environment. Not a lot of good it'l do though, Unfortunately, nobody significant cares, and we are all doomed.
2009-08-20 00:12:36
I turn off my computer at the mains when finished using.
Use the back-scraps of used paper for drawing ideas - and shopping lists.
Oh.......and I recycle my cup-o-t teabag about 3 times.
( That doesn't count does it, I have to boil the kettle 3 times?! Bother! )
2009-08-21 15:42:12
Us designers can be responsible for creating so much stuff that goes out into the world, so we have a duty to think not only where the source materials have come from, but also where they're likely to end up.
2009-08-21 16:32:59
i grow all my vegetables in a polytunnel out the back. it's well good.
2009-08-24 16:34:10
Less is more (and cheaper) Say it with less colours, lighter paper and try to use fewer pages. It will be cheaper to deliver and produce. It may also save a tree or two. Say it with digital. Digital print is very efficient for smaller quantities with less paper waste.
2009-11-02 09:21:58
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