International Paper is distributing a series of brochures under the title of  DOWN TO EARTH, A Practical Look At Environmental Issues And Trends. They are thought provoking and well-designed. I tell you this upfront because it is always good to know the source. In this case it is a paper company making a case for paper, so be sure to take it with a grain of wood pulp.

The brochure I have on my desk in front of me asks the question, Are Pixels Greener Than Paper? I never really thought about it, but if I had I suppose my answer would be, “Of course, pixels are greener than paper.” After all you don’t have to harvest a tree for a blip on the screen.  Right? Well I was surprised to learn:

• 

  20% less CO2

  “Twenty percent less CO2 is used per year by a person reading a daily printed newspaper versus a person reading  web-based news for 30 minutes a day.”

• “On average it takes 500 kilowatt-hours of electricity to produce 440 lbs. of paper, the typical amount of paper each of us consumes annually. That’s the equivalent of powering one computer continuously for five months.”
• 

  60% energy increase

  “It costs an estimated $2.8 billion [in] energy to leave computers sitting idle overnight in the U.S. alone. On a CO2 basis, that’s 20 million tons of carbon dioxide, about the amount produced by four million cars on the road.”

• “A government study estimates that the rise in gadget ownership and the switch from analogue to digital TV could boost the electricity usage of the consumer electronic sector by 60 percent by 2010.”

There is more to report on this issue and International paper recommends the following sites for further information: ipsustainability.com ; abudantforests.org ; epa.gov ; fsc.org ; iea.org ; pefc.org ; sfiprogram.org ; iplifeoftheforest.com

Next: Sustainability and Recyclability

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 Question: If I order a reprint will the price be the same?

This came up recently when a customer realized that the address on her business stationery was out of date. You’d think a question like this would require a simple yes or no. You might think that, but you could be wrong. There are several variables that would affect the reprint bid, here’s some things to consider:

• The price might actually be less!

If the job was completed recently enough that the factors going into the bid hadn’t changed, your price could be less. Printing bids consist of two parts, fixed costs and variable costs. The fixed costs include prep work, press make-ready, overhead, and such. Every printing  job needs some amount of pre-press preparation to get the files ready to plate. If your job is an exact reprint, with emphasis on the word “exact,” a reprint could cut out some, if not all of the pre-press work, thus saving the printer and you money.

• What if I want some minor type change?

A minor change probably won’t cost as much as a major change, but unless your printer is willing to throw it in for free there should be a charge.

• How long ago was the job printed?

If it was last printed two or three years ago, they may no longer have the files and will have to start over. I work with a graphic designer who had purged her files on a five year old project. Without warning, her customer came back after five years and expected a reprint. I was called, and happily, I keep my records for seven years. To be perfectly clear we are talking about my job files, not customer art files. But because I was able to provide the specifications from the previous printing we were able to accommodate their request by recreating the original art. We did have to choose a new vendor because the previous one was no longer making that particular product. A lot changes in five years, you know.

• What about paper cost increases?

Paper and other supplies are not static. When paper, ink, plates, or other materials increase those increases must be passed along at some point. What makes commodities go up? Supply and demand is the easiest answer but not the most complete. There are a whole host of reasons that affect pricing and that’s why god made economists. Let’s just say that if paper takes a 6% bump (which is not unusual), you will see it in your bid.

• What else could increase cost?

Every business faces increases in operating expense. Good employees need to be rewarded with pay raises. Equipment breaks down and must be repaired or replaced. Insurance, taxes, and licence fees go up.

• The printer bid it wrong last time.

Printing is custom manufacturing. Every job the printer does is a custom job. When estimating a project the printer has to take into consideration the costs of materials, time, labor, overhead, and profit. With all these variables in play it is easy to make a mistake. When there is an error in the bid, the printer is often made to hold to the original bid price. Most printers, if the difference isn’t too onerous, are willing for the sake of goodwill.  If you don’t know this by now you should know that printers as a group are very helpful and understanding. I’ve seen them go much further than they should to please a customer. If you feel you are being treated unfairly by a printer, step back and ask yourself if that is really true. Maybe the fault is somewhere in the middle. And perhaps, perish the thought, the blame is more yours than theirs. The bottom line is that if the job was mis-bid last time, for whatever reason, you can’t really expect the same price on a reprint–can you?

• Did the printer have an advantage?

Maybe the printer bought some paper on a closeout discount, or ordered enough “house” stock to get a price advantage. Maybe an ink company made an offer that couldn’t be refused. There could be a thousand different reasons for the printer to have a better price one time and one not as good at another. Printing is a VERY competitive business. If you don’t take every opportunity to best the competition with wise buying you’ll lose. So if you see a reprint bid that is 30% higher than the previous one, it could be that they don’t have that advantage any more.

I’m sure I’ve missed some reasons in this list, and if anyone would like to add to it just let us all know by adding your comment.

I don’t know if it is media caused, but the whole country seems to be in the grip of Chicken Little syndrome. We think the sky is falling just because someone else tells us it is. If you listen to the “experts” they’d have you believe that we are on the doorstep of doom and destruction. Greenhouse gasses, global warming, polluted water and air, my goodness you’d think we had “one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel”, as my former scoutmaster used to say.

In the 70′s there was a hew and cry about cutting down trees and the paper industry responded by creating recycled paper. It was truly u-g-l-y and didn’t print worth a da_ n, but it was environmentally friendly. Whew. Since then the paper mills have been refining their techniques. There are mills that recycle everything. What they can’t use in the product, they recycle to produce energy to run the mill. No waste. You’d be hard pressed to find a paper stock now that doesn’t contain some percentage of recycled fiber, and the days of ugly, unprintable paper are gone. Some of the most beautiful sheets around are recycled.

But what about the trees? Aren’t we destroying forests for toilet tissue and newspapers? No, we aren’t. Again, the people spoke, the government listened, and the industry responded. Today, according to some, we have more forested acres in the United States than existed in colonial times.  That may or may not be true, but we have not seen wholesale devastation of our forests either. There are plenty of trees out there, and when harvested for lumber or paper the land is replanted with new trees. Take a drive to the Pacific Northwest and notice the many lumber farms. Now we can grow trees like we grow corn and harvest them without bulldozing a mountainside.

I’ve mentioned twice now how industries change direction to meet the wants and needs of the public, do you doubt that it is true? Companies exist to serve the people. If the people don’t buy their products or services, they go out of business. Kaput. Finis. All change is hard. Companies are unwilling to make changes unless they can see that it will pay off. Going green has been paying off and so you will continue to see more innovations. I’m certain of it.

I’ve focused mainly on paper, but printing presses have changed also. Thirty years ago heat-set web presses burned off the ink solvents in drying ovens and released them into the air. I didn’t know that in addition to stinking up my clothes, it was also fouling my lungs. Now, by law, these presses come equipped with scrubbers that clean and vent the air to the outside.

Ink has changed as well. 100% Petroleum based inks are rare. Today inks are created with soy and petroleum.

So what am I getting at? The sky is not falling. The printing business is environmentally aware, and there will be trees to climb, and water to swim in for innumberable generations to come. Don’t get in an uproar because we truly are greeener than you think.