Blog

Drupa 2020 is off until April 2021, which hopefully will give the organisers time to rethink their sustainability strategy. The event originally conceived for this year was to have had other priorities than sustainability. The speaker programme includes relatively limited sustainability input, for instance Achim Halpaap, a senior advisor from the United Nations Environmental Programme was to have been talking about sustainability in the printing and packaging industry with a particular focus on trends, tools and leadership.

Nailing down what makes a system sustainable or not exercises some of the best brains on the planet. Mostly this is in response to the threats of climate change, but the graphics industry’s sustainability credentials are mostly based on responses to existential threats. The industry has been blessed with two life threatening events: digital technology gave us electronic prepress and typesetting; the internet wiped out whole sectors of publishing and production. Both events forced many businesses to the wall, albeit for different reasons, but the net result has been positive. We have seen huge innovations in production software and hardware and in applications. More importantly we have a far more environmentally sustainable industry. Waste continues to be forced out of print media production systems and process control cuts energy usage and the associated emissions. Printing close to the point of use reduces transport emissions too.