The printing industry undergoes a climate change as it reduces its environmental impact
Few inventions have had the cultural, political and social impact of printing. Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the movable type printing press in the 15th century brought the written word to millions and has arguably done more to eliminate ignorance than any other invention in the past thousand years.
However, the printing industry – along with the attendant logging and paper-manufacturing industries – has had a long-term impact on the environment. According to a 2001 U.S. Department of Agriculture resource assessment, the demands of the U.S. paper industry require the logging of an estimated five million acres of trees annually. Throw in the use of petroleum-based inks, toxic press cleaners and paper bleaches, and the environmental effects become hard to ignore.
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The paper industry is well aware of its eco-impact, and in recent years, the printing industry has been making efforts to clean up its act, starting with its use of paper. Two certifying organizations – the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) – have developed standards for responsible forest use, management, and sustainability. The SFI certification, for instance, requires “a land stewardship ethic that integrates reforestation and the managing, growing, nurturing, and harvesting of trees for useful products with the conservation of soil, air and water quality, biological diversity, wildlife and aquatic habitat, recreation, and aesthetics.”
Meanwhile, the FSC offers a “chain of custody” certification, which verifies that a paper mill, merchant and printer in a paper product’s supply chain have all worked to ensure that the fiber in the paper came from FSC-certified sources. The biggest coup to date for the FSC is the Scholastic Corporation’s decision in March 2007 to use FSC-certified paper for 65 percent of the 16,700 tons of paper needed for the initial print run (12 million copies) of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
Ideally, says Susan Kinsella, executive director of San Francisco’s Conservatree, those using FSC-certified paper would also be including recycled content. Scholastic’s final Harry Potter volume is going this route, using at least 30-percent post-consumer recycled paper. The Green Press Initiative, a nonprofit program, has collected promises from more than 140 small publishers to use 30-percent to 100-percent recycled paper within the next five years. While recycled papers were once viewed as too expensive and low quality, Kinsella says paper made from 30-percent post-consumer recycled fiber now costs roughly the same as paper made from virgin fiber.
Paper with 100-percent recycled fiber tends to be more expensive, but Kinsella says that businesses can make up the costs in other ways. The City of Seattle, for example, has switched to using only 100-percent recycled paper and simultaneously lowered paper use by 20 percent by greater utilization of print previews on word-processing programs, double-sided forms, and paperless meetings throughout city departments.
