T.S. Eliot wrote, in Murder in the Cathedral, “The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.” And in some sense that was one of the themes that arose during our WhatTheyThink Green Roundtable, held last week at Graphics of the Americas/FESPA Americas. We had invited people from around the industry to join us in a small, informal discussion about environmental sustainability. Companies are pursuing ostensibly sustainable initiatives like recycling, be it paper, aluminum, or other materials, installing “smart building” features, and seeking alternative energy sources, but the question that arises is: do these things help actually make a different to the environment? Is there any way to empirically measure these things? Or are these things just costs without any real benefit? People and businesses want to do the right thing—but what is that right thing? We explored this issue and others in what became a kind of discursive, freewheeling discussion. I recorded the conversation, transcribed it, and will be presenting the transcript on this blog over the next few days. (I’ve divided it up into smallish parts.) What emerged were questions, concerns, some possible solutions, and—as you’ll see in later posts—a “wish list” of what our participants feel the industry needs in order to steer printers, print buyers, and other graphic communications professionals in the right direction so that they can minimize costs and make a real difference, and not just tilt at sustainable windmills. The participants included: Moderator: Richard Romano, WhatTheyThink/Going Green Dave Breihof, Sales Manager, SignComp—“Our facility is 100% green—or so we think. That’s our concern.” Giselle de la Moriniere, Marketing and Communications Manager, MGI—“We’re a manufacturer of digital presses and finishing solutions...I’m always interested in hearing the discussions among industry peers.” Frazer Chesterman, Managing Director, FESPA—“In Europe, there is a similar amount of confusion and greenwashing as you have in the States.” Stephen Goddard, Environmental Leadership Program Manager, HP Graphic Solutions Business—“We try and get into some of the issues and try to understand what is the environmental impact of our printing systems vs. the alternatives.” Paul Paulette, VP Sustainable Products, ConVerd—“We try to accommodate everyone’s desire to have a sustainable future and a sustainable identity by building products around a paper formula....The clients who buy print were saying ‘We don’t know what’s green and what’s not green. Help us identify what is green.’” Chris Thorne, General Manager, Graphics Division, Metafix—“We look at any waste stream or any customer who has a waste stream, look at what the parameters are, look at what the regulations are, what the problems are with that waste stream and see if we can come up with a solution for it.” Matt Foster, Director of Specialty Papers, Finch Paper—“There is so much misconception in the marketplace that killing a tree is like killing a baby and I know that’s harsh, but it’s true. We run up against that all the time....Look at paper, it is very sustainable, it is very efficient, it has a low environmental footprint and impact.” Richard Romano: To start off, we should try to all get on the same page. What is “green”? What does environmental sustainability in printing mean? Is it printing on recycled paper? Is it getting certified? Is it having a completely sustainable plant? Matt Foster: I break it down into three areas that are absolutely critical. Sustainability means as you use resources, how long are those resources going to be available and what’s the cycle of those resources. Efficiency; you’re not wasting resources, or you’re minimizing the use of them. And then footprint minimization; what is the impact to all concerned by the production of your raw materials and the product life cycle. What’s the impact? RR: What metrics would you use to gauge those impacts, either quantitatively or qualitatively? MF: Going back to paper vs. petroleum-based products. These are more qualitative than quantitative, but as you pull oil out of the ground, it’s gone. It’s not coming back. A tree? Trees regenerate themselves. Granted, it’s a longer growing process than, say, corn, but they do regenerate themselves. The forests that we manage, at any given time, 96% of those forests go untouched and those are the healthiest that you’ll find because of the way we manage them. There’s always going to be that resource for us. I saw somewhere that someone was making paper out of limestone [see, for example, here. —Ed.], and it was very cool, but I thought, “How—” Paul Paulette: To save a tree... MF: Yes, to save a tree. Dave Breihof: Burn a rock! Giselle de la Moriniere: And wait a million years for another piece of limestone to form... MF: Fly over the land and look down at a limestone quarry. It’s a big scar in the earth. PP: [Getting back to the paper vs. petroleum issue] I would think it would take a lot less energy to process a tree into paper than it does to extract oil, refine it, and get it ready to use. DB: And I think that’s the basis of our concern. We burn a lot of energy—mental and physical—trying to spend a dollar recycling something. We’re not sure that we’re doing the right thing. When the plant people go to lunch, the lights automatically turn off when they move into a different part of the business. The question we toss around is, “What does it cost to turn those lights off for the few minutes we’re out of the building and then turn them back on?” Are we actually burning more energy? That is the basis of all of our questions. And none of us has the time or the resources to get those answers. We’re turning off the lights behind us, but are we really doing any good for anybody? We’re conscientious about that, but we don’t know what else we’re supposed to do. Stephen Goddard: A key aspect for me is getting your processes under control, actually understanding where you’re starting from, what resources am I consuming today, what are my levels of waste, etc. And once you’ve measured them, you can improve over time against your starting position and measure your change in impact, also the cost implications of saving energy, of recycling. I would imagine you get money for recycling aluminum—or you should. Everybody else does. DB: The process of doing all that, when it all comes down, it costs us money. Because they’re metal shavings [SignComp recycles their aluminum waste], from the time we clean them all up, sort them, to storing them, having someone come over...it’s not a cost savings. All of our crates are recycled wood, we’re down to where we count how many staples actually go to hold these crates together. It’s certainly not a savings, taking all of our material and recycling it, all the paper, all the wood, all the aluminum we have. Frazer Chesterman: What gets me is the confusion over this. For me, this is best practices. When you’re absolutely doing the right thing, there is this sense that the people that buy from you, you can show that you’re adopting a policy that is positive rather than negative. There’s a lack of clarity in terms of anybody standing up and saying “This is what you should do and this is why you should do it.” This is the difficulty. Do we define a best practice, or do we start to define specifically what is the standard we should all be aligning to on the basis that there is a clear green route? DB: You’re absolutely correct. We believe we are doing the right practice, we can’t be doing anything wrong, we have to be helping. But are we making a difference? We’re not sure. FC: All the aluminum shavings, and all the work and effort and there might be other things that are costs. You never quite know, do you? There’s not a formula, if you like. PP: That’s what we are grasping for, we’re grasping for a formula that gives us the quantifiable data that says we’re doing the right thing. We struggle as we look out in the marketplace. We went to a university and we said, “Before we start down this road, can you help us understand the cost of recycling vs. the impact and the benefit of recycling?” DB: Yes, exactly. PP: What the university told us was, “Here’s the problem. The rush to 100% recycled components is great for source reduction at that one step. But the commitment to 100% recycled products eliminates the recyclability of the product downstream and only causes us to flood our waterways and flood our landfills with stuff that can no longer be reused or recovered. And we’re kidding ourselves.” So we had them do a model for us and one of the things they showed us was the energy cost of the input side—what it takes to do the recycling—vs. what you yield on the backside or recapture, and they said you have to be careful, that there’s an equitable balance that you have to achieve. When we look at the equitable balance, that’s why we went to Finch [ConVerd works with Finch Paper]. We said we need a mill that understands what we’re talking about first and can share our philosophy of sustainability. And the university led us to that conclusion with the formula. It’s probably similar for you guys [SignComp]—processwise, it is definitely the right thing to do. But you wonder if you’re chasing it for the right reasons or the wrong reasons. SG: The problem is, you have different types of environmental impact. We can boil it down to climate change, human health, ecosystem quality, and resources. And they’re not comparable. So ultimately the only thing you can truly compare across everything you do is money. So it makes a lot of sense to measure your footprint and to start chasing down where can I reduce my impact and save money at the same time. Reducing my energy consumption would be a great place to start. It then becomes an incentive to the business to take action to find ways to both reduce impact and reduce costs. FC: There’s a commercial viability to it as well. [to be continued]