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HP Inc is without doubt the biggest player in the graphics industry. Net revenue in 2018 was a cool $58.3 billion. The R&D spend alone for the year was $1.4 billion. As a founding member of the Verdigris project, we are glad to have HP’s support and glad they can afford it. Support is what environmental impact mitigation is all about, especially now when sustainability and the planet’s health are in crisis. Sustainability efforts from HP, Kodak, Miraclon, Ricoh et al, however are grounded in commercial reality: if the planet crashes and burns, there is no business, only survival. So the more investment into developing the foundations for circular, low carbon economies, the better. It makes good sound business sense, both in the near future and long term.

Waitrose is one of the UK’s posher supermarkets and it has joined the growing list of retailers trialing new approaches to packaging. Part of the commitment is that by 2023 all Waitrose own brand packaging will be reusable, home compostable or recyclable. And there will be no more black plastic packaging trays for meat and fish by the end of 2019. The initiative is a bit of a reversion to past practise, in that it is based on customers reusing their own bags. Except that this idea extends to customer supplied containers for goods that would otherwise be packaged in plastic.