(This is a long conversation. If you prefer to print it to read, you can get a PDF here.)

Printing green and being a green printer are well and good, but to call your company "Green Printer" is taking it to another level entirely. Not only are you clearly defining your principles, you are setting some pretty high standards. Green Printer, Burnaby BC, does not just talk the talk, they are walking it - or more likely, running it! Paper, of course, has the largest effect on printing cost and is the key element of a printed product. The choice of paper makes a big difference in whether a project is environmentally sensitive, coupled with inks and finishes that make "end of life" recycling possible. The first thing you will notice when placing an order with Green Printer, is your choice of papers. All the papers offered are treeless, contain recycled post-consumer waste (PCW), or are FSC or SFI certified. Next, note the printing processes; waterless inks are used, products are gang printed to reduce off-cuts, and non-toxic finishes are offered. Finally, calculate the number of trees saved, the amount of greenhouse gas and waste water emissions avoided, and the amount of energy conserved - on a job-by-job basis or across all jobs ordered by your company. Then wrap that all up with staff that will ask you if you really need to print that project? and you've got a printer that is green from beginning to end. The co-owners of Green Printer, Brian Schindel, President, and Alen Rokolj, Vice President, are not new to printing; they have worked in the print industry for a long time. Slowly, they became more and more aware of the effect that commercial printing has on the environment and decided to create a new type of printing company. One that could make a difference. Since July, Green Printer has saved 3,750 trees from being turned into paper and avoided the following energy use and emissions:

• Saved 1,545,410 gallons of water
• Avoided producing 171,400 pounds of solid waste
• Avoided emitting 336,270 pounds of CO2
• Avoided using 2.57 billion BTUs of energy

We had the opportunity to meet Alen and Brian - and the Green Printer CTO, Anton Parygin - and begin what has been a series of long conversations; following are excerpts of those discussions. . . .

. . (Back to the top of the page.) How Did You Get Here? WTT: You have made a choice to help change the printing industry, to act as a change agent. What made you see things differently? How did you get here? Brian: I watch my son and what he does; he's 11 years old. The world he explores is a lot different than the one I grew up in. When I was a kid I belonged to a couple of boys groups and we used to go hiking. I got to go out an enjoy nature and see a lot of wildlife. I didn't start out to become an environmentalist; I studied business management. As I learned more about the business side, it became clear that there is no reason for business to be as wasteful as it is. About 25 years ago, I consulted with a food company to help set up recycling programs in their stores. Then I worked on greenway recycling programs, where wood, bark and chip were going to co-generation plants to make electricity. I thought then "we're wasting these beautiful trees and we're talking about building another co-gen plant, to do what? Burn more trees?" At that point, I went into software development and then moved into the print industry. Unfortunately, there I saw guys who were using alcohol on the presses and dumping fountain solution down the toilet. They even tried to dilute their waste from the plate processors and put that down the toilet. I knew it had to stop. The first thing our company did was to go to ablative plates where the only waste is just a little bit of carbon. Then we went thermal direct with Creo (Kodak). The next step was to get all the chemistry off the press. As I started making changes there was a lot of push back from the other employees. They kept saying, "We've never done it that way before..." To me it was just the natural thing to do. It made sense. (Back to the top of the page.) Alen: I was never hugely concerned about the environment: I would see something on TV and it would bother me for a while, then life would go on as usual until the next really big disaster. The real eye-opener for me was Al Gore's movie - An Inconvenient Truth - that was when I decided to do something serious about the environment. A second influence came from my move into a print shop. My background is in prepress, where we processed files but the print shops we serviced were somewhere else. The first time I was in a print show was only a few years ago, and the first thing that struck me was the amount of paper wasted. I knew theoretically that it takes hundreds of sheets to make the press ready, but seeing the actual amount of paper being wasted on a day-to-day basis was shocking. So we started to do some numbers and it was staggering. Brian: About 2 years ago, Alen and I were sitting at Starbucks, and I said, "Let's just do the green thing. I think there's a market for it." There were no real models, nothing to look at. People weren't prepared to take the steps we were prepared to take. The decision was made: if we're going green, we're going green! We decided that recycled paper is the key. On our website, our first paper picks are always recycled with 100% post-consumer waste (PCW). And when we talk to someone on the phone, we pitch them on 100% PCW. In the best of all worlds we wouldn't be using wood for paper, we wouldn't be using wood to build houses; we'd properly handle our resources. Paper will be valuable. Alen: We really came at it from two different directions. Brian wanted to save trees and protect the environment and I wanted to implement process improvement and automation to eliminate waste. We run an eco-friendly business, but first and foremost we run a business. When you make things more efficient, one of the benefits is that you are being more eco-friendly because you have far less waste. (Back to the top of the page.) The Printer as Change Agent WTT: We're seeing consumers expressing an interest in products that are greener. Designers have the option to choose greener materials. And the printer is in the middle of that chain. How difficult is it for a printer to be a change agent in that value chain? How do you see the printer making change happen? Alen: We show print buyers and designers the numbers. We have designed tools that will show people what their impact on the environment is. Once people actually visualize it, it motivates them. Green Printer was the first to do two really unique things; first we calculated the environmental savings from using recycled paper on every job. I'm happy to see that there are some other companies doing the same thing. Second, we keep all those numbers on file so the client can access them at any time and see the savings are over a period of time. They can see the total savings for their company and the savings for each print buyer. We also allow them to install a widget on their website that displays their savings to their own customers. If you pay a little more for printing on recycled paper, and sometimes you do, you should show the value to the client. Let the client know what they're getting for their money. Brian: From our standpoint we just have to go out there and do our thing. If it weren't for our ability to market online, it wouldn't work. A High-Tech Company WTT: When we first met, you both said; "We're not a printing company, we're a high-tech company." Tell me about Green Printer as a high-tech company. Alen: Obviously we are printers; we make money by selling printing. But that's where all the similarities with a standard print shop ends. We run our business like any other high tech company would. We incorporate online technology and automation throughout our operation. Everything we do is modeled after high tech companies. From the way we run our marketing and ad campaigns, to lead management and customer support, we use the Internet. Our phone system is VOIP. We have a totally paperless office. We are adding technical support that will allow our customers to search a knowledge base on our site and to log in problems or requests for enhancements through our case management system. And we have online job management. Brian: We're building tools that reduce the materials going into a print job and use equipment more efficiently. Our system properly gangs jobs on a sheet so there are fewer sheets used for make ready and fewer sheets in production for a lower cost to produce the job. Using fewer resources is good for the environment. (Back to the top of the page.) Digital Print, Print on Demand, or Don't Print at All? WTT: You told me that you actually told a customer that they should not print a job, but should look at other ways to reach their customers with their message. Tell me how that came about. Alen: We really believe in what we say; the whole idea is to print less and print on demand. You know how it is, people will order thousands of an item and lots of it ends up being recycled. We try to explain that to new accounts, when we discuss their printing needs. Very often there are items that they really should not be printing. And we will tell them that. The first time we spoke to the University of British Columbia (UBC) we did that. We talked to them about their jobs and whether they should actually be using print media for some of them. They were surprised that we as printers were saying that. There is really no downside to suggesting that someone should print only what they need, even if it means printing less. Sooner or later they will figure it out for themselves. Printers need to be more to a client than just someone who puts ink on paper. Our clients often ask for advice and occasionally they want to know if they should print something or not. They want a way to economically deliver their message. Brian: Starting off as a small business, I have a better chance of getting a small order than fighting with a larger printer for a larger job. If I think that larger project would be more appropriate delivered on the web, I'll tell the customer that. And I would rather do 5000 rack cards and put a catalog online. From both the business and environmental stand points it can all work together. The right thing to ask is: What is the best way to get your message to your customer or client? Is it online or print? If it's print, then put it on recycled paper. About Green Printer Officially launched in June 2007, Green Printer provides affordable environmentally friendly printing to print buyers across North America. Committed to innovation and higher standards for sustainable printing practices, Green Printer prints only on treeless, recycled, or Chain of Custody certified papers. For more information:

Green Printer Ltd 4020 1st Avenue Burnaby BC, V5C 3W4 Toll Free Phone: 1-800-737-4308 www.greenprinteronline.com (Back to the top of the page.)