My recent post about recycling not saving trees certainly did not sit well with everyone. One critic, who opined offline, even wanted me to write a retraction (actually, more like a recantation). Imagine that. Me, taking it back. Which got me thinking. What about all the tons and tons of printed material produced every month that aren’t paper-based? What happens to those plastic, acrylic, PET, styrene cardboard, fabric and vinyl signs, displays, store fixtures and promotional tchotchkes at the end of their service lives? Who takes THOSE things back? Truth be told, not enough people do.
I spoke recently with Paul Lilienthal of Minneapolis-based Pictura Graphics, a company that produces large-format graphics, branded interiors and outdoor signage. Pictura has amassed its share of environmental accolades, and was the first printing facility to be certified by the Sustainable Green Printing Partnership. Paul’s company has made great strides in its own recycling efforts, moving more than 3,000 pounds of material per month out of the waste stream and into the recycling stream. That includes the “easy” stuff (mixed office paper, cardboard, bottles and cans) for which recycling streams are well-established, and the “not-so-easy” stuff (various plastics, acrylic, styrene cardboard, fabric, vinyl, etc.) for which recycling streams may not be readily accessible in a given locale.
Paul thinks the non-recycling of large-format printed material is an issue that warrants the industry’s attention. Because, as bright as Pictura Graphic’s recycling story has become, consider that only about 10% of Pictura’s input materials end up as waste of any kind. Which means that for every pound of waste generated at the plant, there are nine pounds of material, now printed, going to customers – at least some portion of which could be recycled or reused by somebody, somewhere.
Extrapolating from the recycling figures (inaccurate, to be sure, but illustrative), there is something like 27,000 pounds of stuff moving from Pictura Graphics into customers’ hands every month. And it is going to have an “end of service life” moment eventually.
Thirteen and a half tons per month. That’s the impact of just one wide-format graphics printer among many, all churning out tons of great-but-temporary work that will someday end up in a landfill, unless the customer has the means, and the inclination, to recycle it.
And that’s where the rubber meets the road. Apparently recycling isn’t easy enough, profitable enough, or important enough for many companies to overcome the inertia of business as usual and the convenience of the dumpster outside just waiting to be fed.
You want sources of inertia? Here are a few off the top of my head (not Paul's). There are the store personnel who need to be trained on how to handle a range of materials at the end of service life. There are the distribution centers that do a great job of getting materials out to multiple locations, but don’t have backhauling built into their DNA. There are common carriers and express companies that deliver materials on time and for a reasonable fee, but that are not paid to, or instructed to, pick up spent goods.
And even if the cost-of-backhauling and cost-of-shipping obstacles can be removed from the equation, as a few manufacturers have tried to do, there still remains one ultimate, insurmountable hurdle: recycling is seen as a pain in the butt. Putting something in a special bin, or boxing it up and slapping a prepaid shipping label on it is just one more thing to do in a day full of many one-more-things to do.
It is unrealistic to think that our short-attention-span society will abandon the “look, shiny” proclivity that is the engine driving much of advertising, including printed materials. So there always will be a lot of printed stuff that has simply outlived its usefulness. What do we do with it? Who takes it back?
I don’t have the answer, but this blog is available for you to air yours. Any takers?
