Log in to access your account details, subscriptions and purchased items.
View cart (0 items 0,00 €)
It’s wonderful to get a response to the Verdigris blogs, especially responses pointing out mistakes. We’ve had a correction relating to the serial rant about how industry associations don’t do enough to support sustainability and the environment, so we’d like to set the record straight.
As certifications go, this is probably not desperately exciting to most people. But to the people behind the document (including me), it is very exciting indeed, especially since SwissQPrint, a leading manufacturer of large format digital printers, has achieved certification within a few months of the document’s publication. SwissQPrint is the first in its field to declare its energy efficiency data according to ISO 20690.
For many years now the graphics industry has benefited from cloud computing, initially with the Software-as-a-Service model pioneered by Agfa and latterly with a growing range of subscriber based cloud services. Adobe started the cloud ball rolling some years ago with CSS subscriptions and HP has developed the industry’s most ambitious offering with its PrintOS service, available since 2016.
This is the fourth part of a series of blogs suggesting ideas for topics addressed in environmental policy statements. Industry associations serving the needs of journalists, illustrators, designers, authors, publishers, printers and so on are largely passive when it comes to improving environmental impacts. In the previous blogs we’ve considered the three Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, emissions controls and management and waste handling. But how about materials usage and considering what’s required to produce a given print product and its recycling?
In our first blog on getting industry associations to encourage wider sustainability awareness, we put the three Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, at the top of the list. But sector specific environmental impact and sustainability policy statements need much more. Graphic industry sectors such as newspapers, magazines, book and packaging production really should have robust environmental guidance from their associations. Sadly it’s largely absent from their websites and, even sadder, this is a missed opportunity. A high profile position on the environment helps the graphics industry to take ownership and lead the environmental impact conversation. It’s also useful reference for countering the negativity that is often associated with print in all its forms.
