Twenty-three years ago,
Lynn Krinsky moved from one end of I-90 to the other - from one "bean town" to another. She left Boston to arrive in Seattle about the time
Starbucks started expanding outside of Seattle. And in 1988 she launched her digital print services company.
Stella Color, the name her company took in 1996, was named after Lynn's miniature dachshund, Stella, who passed away several years ago at the considerable age of 13. Keeping the tradition of company dog, Carmella (another tiny dachshund) took over "cute" responsibilities three years ago.
A firm believer in a holistic approach to sustainability, Lynn is in the process of applying for
Sustainable Green Printer certification. Not discounting that companies want to become
Chain of Custody certified by
FSC or
SFI, she believes that environmental efforts need to be company-wide; not focused on a single type of substrate.
That becomes clear when she begins to go down her checklist for certification; and she has pages and pages of them.
- Do you have MSDS sheets for all your products?
- Does your health and safety committee meet regularly?
- Do you have safety guards on all your equipment?
- Do you have too much light in one part of your operation and not enough in another?
- Do you have your sprinklers regularly checked?
- Do you have automatic times in the bathrooms?
Her rapid-fire delivery shows exactly how much she has been thinking about it. Stella Color's
Environmental Management Statement says:
We see sustainability as a continual journey towards enlightenment to best practices in our daily lives.
By working with
State of Washington health and safety resources and
City of Seattle utilities like
Seattle City Light, Lynn has improved working conditions for her staff and can delivery higher quality products to her customers.
Offering 16 environmentally friendly media options, Lynn prints with the first
HP L65500 latex printer in the Northwest. She sees her investment in this new press as one more example of her commitment to the environment.
Known for her inclination to push her equipment to the edge of its abilities, Lynn often tests unusual substrates to create out of the ordinary designs. To do that requires a lot of testing and that means a lot of waste. Rather than put those test projects in the recycle, she turns them into totes and shopping bags, pouches and envelopes, and other practical products.
