Discussion

By Patrick Berger on Feb 21, 2008

When you add the carbon footprint for all he maintenance items. All the time the service people come and used gasoline to get to your facility. All the toner cartridges and fusers that are constantly being sent to you and back to the manufacturer. If some one could do the carbon footprint for all of these items we could have a very good understanding of the greenness of the process. Thank you Pat Berger

By Gary Jones on Feb 21, 2008

At this point in time, it is too premature to start making value judgements regarding the overall environmental impact that one particular type of printing has in comparison to another one. Each printing type has its own advantages and disadvantages as it pertains to the overall environmental footprint of the technology.

It is important to not focus on one particluar aspect of the technology and use that as the basis for the comparison. In order to begin to make comparisons, a life cycle analysis using the same set of parameters needs to be conducted on each printing type. A life cycle analysis is the measure of the true and total cost to the environemnt and to date, there have only been a few life cycle studies performed on printing with most of them focused on the printed product and not the printing method.

In addition, it may not be to the industry's overall benefit to start making these types of comparisons as each printing type serves a vital role in fullfilling the needs of the customer. What is more important is for the printer to identify, understand, and start a program to reduce the overall environmental footprint of their operation. This is why we have created the Sustainable Green Printing Partnership, which is a program to set critiera and recognize printers for their sustainablity efforts. See www.sgppartnership.org for more information.

Gary Jones
Director, EHS Affairs
PIA/GATF

By John on Feb 21, 2008

In response to the carbon foot print of technicians going to and from and toner cartridges fusers and the like:

What about the carbon footprint of the ink, plates, solvents (to clean the press between each job) and storage of documents. Plus the largest footprint by far is the paper itself as you are cutting down trees to begin with. If you look at the majority of press work you also have waste to the N-th degree because 37% of press work ends up out dated and thrown in the landfills. What is the cost of shipping a press and the raw materials that go into it? This is as yours is a straw man argument. You cannot expect one tally with out the traditional process to be ignored when calculating carbon footprint totals.

I think Pat when you ad these issues into the equation you will find that the carbon footprint is far lower for digital than traditional press work. Especially since the paper is first shipped from the manufacturer, to a distributor, then to the print shop, then to a ware house, then to another ware house, then to a storage room, and then to the end user.

Besides maybe its time to start thinking about digital presses and what you consider short run these days especially in the color world. On digital output machines the dynamic is now 5000 completed documents as a short run that when done digitally is more competitive than by press when the document contains a second side and or multiple sheets. Try printing one catalog on press for instance.

Also when transmitting the print jobs by wire or having them hosted on a web site where information can be updated on a regular basis, those print jobs can be up to date and just in time to the customers on a daily basis. Try that one on press.

Then we get into the variable data side and the fact that the results can mean less mailing and less persuasion is needed to make a sale from a promotional mailer. Again try that on press.

Over all from response rates and POD you are reducing waste, energy, and the almighty dollar when you move to distributed or regional digital print scenarios.

By Ben on Feb 21, 2008

Digital, offset, doesn't really matter. Neither are truly "green". We, in the printing industry, really have to start being honest with ourselves. The green movement is not an opportunity for anyone in the printing community! It is our largest threat! I'm tired of hearing so many press manufacturers and paper companies talk about our new product which helps with the reduction of ..." The only solace I can offer is, find the niche that can't go away or is affected the least and do it better than anyone else. So many have been going gangbusters and printing bottled water labels at record paces, but it's now declining. Pay attention to the combined marketing efforts of Nalgene and Brita. These are the trends we need to open our eyes to and adapt. We can't continue to do business "the way we've always done it!" Find the niche, find profits.

By David Watson on Feb 21, 2008

Also you need to weigh in no film, no plates, no chemistry or energy to process and develop. No "make ready" further saves paper and ink, as does in line finishing.

By Mike on Feb 21, 2008

http://printceoblog.com/2008/02/is-digital-printing-the-greenest#comment-4735" rel="nofollow">@Ben The green movement is a huge opportunity for http://www.sgppartnership.org/">consultants

By Tom Wetjen on Feb 21, 2008

Adam, You certainly offer a compelling synopsis of my colleague Bob Wagner’s thoughts on the subject. It’s our position at Xerox that digital is certainly a very effective way of operating a more "green" printing operation. Print on demand is environmentally friendly by nature because it eliminates obsolescence and reduces waste. I’ve yet to see a broad study on whether digital is “the greenest” option out there, but it is certainly a powerful way of incorporating sustainable methods into the business. It’s probably better for each individual commercial printer to assess their needs and outputs with a vendor to find out just how much benefit digital methods can offer their business. But as commercial print shops find more of their customers asking for green practices and products from their suppliers, more and more shops are seeing that a sustainability-based business model isn’t just a “nice-to-have” item, it can be a significant competitive differentiator. Tom Wetjen

By Dr Joe Webb on Feb 23, 2008

Unfortunately, carbon footprint calculations are often quite dubious and the science is not as settled as it is made to sound. What's more important is that customers think it is, and many who subscribe to the the "precautionary principle" think we should run with the idea even if it isn't settled. This is something customers want, and it is clear that it's not going to change. The real question is what is "green" or not, and the carbon footprint should be viewed as today's measurement of it. There will be others. They will be more reliable. They will make more sense, and perhaps be more convincing. There are obvious things in digital printing compared to current printing that make sense without a carbon footprint measurement. The first thing is that compared to offset there is no startup waste. We don't need a carbon footprint to measure that, the startup waste has real economic value of paper not bought and electricity not consumed and labor not wasted that can then be deployed elsewhere. There is spoilage in digital printing, but there can be far less than in offset. Remember the difference between waste and spoilage is that waste is planned and inherent in the process; spoilage results from an unanticipated process event or bad process management. Of course, digital printing has its own issues of "un-greenness" but the technology is being developed at a time when these issues are considered in the design of the process from the beginning. But much of digital printing's "green-ness" comes from outside the process of printing. The use of electronic publishing techniques rather than older photographic processes, the elimination of plates, as well as all of the labor involved in managing those. Data base technologies that allow better targeting of mailings that mean lower paper use and potentially fewer mailings. The fact that e-commerce exists today means that many pages of catalogs and promotional mailings have been eliminated because mailings direct the target audience to web sites and web pages. One cannot escape, however, that electric gadgets consume electricity and that printed products, once printed, do not. Hard drives and servers need to be always on to be accessed. In the U.S., that electricity is predominantly coal-based. Coal burning has made giant strides in becoming more environmentally manageable in the last decades. Nuclear power, used mainly in Europe, has superior costs and would be a better alternative in the digital environment. Electronic media are not as environmentally benign as they seem. Wind power certainly has its niche and has become important to many printers in ensuring their viability and acceptability to large corporations with environmental initiatives. The source of electricity for printing is one of the most important aspects of its "greenness" and not all printers have the choice to tap into wind power as a means to appear greener than others. Whether offset or digital, the cradle-to-grave considerations (after we use it, what do we do with it?) of whether to print or not have negatively affected demand for print. This is a primary reason to continue to use recycled materials and recyclable products. The pressure to avoid print has become part of our culture and it is not likely to be reversed, whether offset or digital. But with digital there are greater controls and greater options. With offset you have to guess at run length, and often are encouraged to print more than needed because the unit costs are lower at that part of the run and there are cost penalties of going back on press (new makereadies, etc.) that are not part of digital printing. In the end, digital printing is probably more environmentally benign than offset but not so much because of its imaging process but because of the wider range of options it offers in run length, targeting, and tie-in to other media. One important question is how long run lengths can actually be. I remember back in 1993 that it would take 275 Indigo E-Prints to produce the same amount of work of one Heidelberg Sunday Press. It may be that one of the best environmental thing to do is to have a diversity of equipment in the industry to be sure that the right equipment is always doing the right job. Just as an aside, we used to go through a box of paper a month in our little office. We now go through half a box a year. The primary reason? Bigger computer screens! At the same time our monthly FedEx bill of $300 is now $0 because of e-mail and other services. My research assistant now works in her home instead of driving to her office because of the Internet. I was getting 35 magazines a month between subscriptions and free trade magazines, and I now get 2, only because they ignore my requests to stop getting them. Also, regarding all that shipping cost that is part of the carbon footprint that some other posters were concerned about. UPS and others are far more efficient in their energy use than any individual company or shipper could be because they are closest to the purchase of the energy they need and have every incentive to use it in the best cost possible. One reason why recycling and other environmental issues are hard to communicate is that consumers are distant from their actual costs of disposal and disposal management. When garbage collection, for example, is part of property tax, there is no incentive to use less because the cost is unknown. When the cost is not known, moral suasion has to be used, and unfortunately too much of the environmental movement has relied on disaster scenarios, pessimism, and fear rather than common sense, progress, and optimism. One hopes that these do not create a numbness or backlash against what are reasonable and logical actions to ensure a healthy approach to important issues.

By Sydney on Feb 25, 2008

As Dr Joe Webb said, a printing agency should be more convincing. That's the key issue. Costs must be known by consumers. If they are distant with these, there's nothing to do.

By Wendy Lau on Feb 27, 2008

If a Study was conducted by some organization the term digital needs to be better defined as well. There are presses that use toner ( whats in it how is toner made ) Dye based ink jet (97% water whats in it how is it made) Pigment Based Aqueous ink jet ( whats in it how is it made ). I personally don't think enough attention has been paid to these questions in determining whats green in the Digital world.
Common sence says using digital print reduces waste, time, cost of inventory, and helps the distribution chanel etc.