INSIGHT
Invisible
Print
BY LAUREL BRUNNER, VERDIGRIS PROJECT
Printing and publishing companies produce
media communications. They print books,
magazines, newspapers, catalogues, signs
and displays and all manner of transactional
prints. These are the visible forms of print,
but there is plenty of the stuff that can
easily be overlooked. This is the print that’s
borderline invisible, because it’s taken for
granted. It includes such things as packaging
and labels, directions and instructions for
use, safety sheets, guarantee information and
all that other stuff that just gets forgotten.
All of this unseen print obviously has an
environmental impact. It also contributes to
the environmental impact of a product, such
as a new smartphone or a car, even though
the print tends to be ignored in product
environmental declarations.
When a manufacturer sets up an environmental declaration programme to
evaluate the entire lifecycle of a product, they should also include the print and
packaging associated with it. But what is not clear, is how the print associated
with a given product should be included in the declaration. Nor is it clear how to
specify the fair allocation of prints to the product.
There is a print dimension to virtually everything sold, whether its consumer
goods or investment products. And yet it is overlooked for environmental
declarations that do not relate to commercial print products. The signage in a
car showroom that is specifi c to a particular model, the brochures related to it,
the manual and so on, should also be considered a part of that product. This
means that the associated print should be considered as being in scope for the
product’s environmental declaration.
www.AfricaPrint.com
This isn’t an urgent matter at the moment because so fa r environmental
declarations are not considered vital for modern commerce, nor are they
a universal legal requirement. But as governments tighten environmental
regulations such declarations, business to business and business to consumer
will be increasingly important. We already have requirements for goods such
as household appliances and vehicles to be rated according to their energy
requirements and emissions, so full-on environmental declarations are surely on
the way. The tools are in place with ISO standards such as ISO 14025 and the
International Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) System, but print rarely
fi gures in discussions. The closest it gets is with paper, but not the print process
itself nor the recycling.
Environmental accountability for print is no longer just about demonstrating its
environmental sustainability. Print’s environmental accountability is relevant
for its customers and brand owners who use print in contexts other than
the commercial one that most people associate with it. This is no time for
environmental apathy within the graphics industry, particularly as alternative
media options abound.
The Verdigris Project is supported by Agfa Graphics (www.agfa.com),
EFI (www.efi .com), Epson (www.epson.com), FESPA (www.fespa.com), HP
(www.hp.com/Environment), Kodak (www.kodak.com/go/sustainability),
Kornit (www.kornit.com), Practi cal Publishing (www.practi calpublishing.
co.za), Ricoh (www.ricoh.com), Spindrift (htt p://spindrift .click/), Splash PR
(www.splashpr.co.uk), Unity Publishing (htt p://unity-publishing.co.uk) and
Xeikon (www.xeikon.com).
This work by the Verdigris Project is licenced under a Creati ve Commons
att ributi on-noderivs 3.0 Unported licence
htt p://creati vecommons.org/licences/by-nd/3.0/
V
Laurel Brunner, Managing
Director Digital Dots Limited,
www.digitaldots.org,
www.verdigrisproject.com
AFRICA PRINT JOURNAL
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2018
PG 25