In a previous post, I presented part one of a transcript of a discursive but enlightening roundtable discussion held February 25 at Graphics of the Americas/FESPA Americas. Here is Part 2 of that discussion, culminating in the suggestion that what the industry may very well need is a “Green Summit”—an event that beings the industry together to hash out what environmental sustainability really means. 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.”   Frazer Chesterman: There is a commercial viability to [environmental initiatives] as well. There is also your sense of social responsibility as a business. But there is also the other side of that, which is your customers are demanding certain things. We’re [FESPA] in the wide-format printing market where the POP marketplace, the big retailers, are forcing the situation. The big retailers are saying, “If you’re going to deliver print in my shop, or whatever, it has to meet certain standards.” There’s this level of adoption because you have to do it or you’ll lose business to someone down the road who is offering it. So there is your own social responsibility or your sense of efficiency, or financial efficiency, but there’s also that sense that you’re also accommodating the pull of the business model....A lot of the big big retailers are now having departments set up where they have a waste management guy or a waste management team and they’re deciding what they specify to be green. It’s difficult because there is no consistency. Stephen Goddard: And what customers demand is not always consistent. FC: There are no standards at the moment, really. SG: As we discussed, perception is often very different to reality. The perception is that 100% recycled content paper is the best, but maybe that’s not the best, or that limestone paper is better than wood paper. So you either have to comply with that or educate the customers to help them understand the reality. Paul Paulette: There is no formula. And it really becomes incumbent upon our industry to communicate to the people. That’s what we need, some way to do that effectively, cross-platform, to avoid all that green confusion. FC: Greenwash. PP: Right. Roger [Dziengeleski, vice president and senior forester for Finch Paper] is one of those great guys. I’ve had the opportunity to listen to Roger speak. As a forester, he actually evokes the passion. First of all, he’s a conservationist, so he comes from the perspective of, how can we preserve the natural resources we’re given on this Earth. And he can do it eloquently. But it’s difficult to articulate that message to a marketplace— FC: That is hungry for bucks...quicker, cheaper, faster turnover. Matt Foster: “I’ll go green just so long as...” Dave Breihof: There’s shades of green. How green do I have to be? Dark green, or... FC: Green went off the radar for a year and half whilst there was a financial crisis, and everyone was focused on worrying about the dollar rather than the green, and now it’s come back on. DB: Similar to your point-of-purchase demand, it’s coming from the top down to the manufacturer. They’re having to consider having to do that. It’s a conscientious effort. The construction industries are driven by—in the States, I’m not aware if it’s globally—LEED certification. Chris Thorne: It’s global. DB: Those demands that you’re building a sign—where are you extracting your materials, what are the transportation costs between Point A and Point B, what are your manufacturing costs, and then getting that product to the manufacturer and then to the site—and it’s this circle; they want to know how much energy. And those numbers are so gray it’s amazing to me. You can fill out the paperwork without any knowledge why you’re doing it. Which is ridiculous. If you’re going to force the agenda, people should at least understand why they’re doing it. FC: In the U.S., I understand that there are some standards, some “green standards,” if you like. Richard Romano: The EPA generally has standards, but Stephen [Goddard] was telling me that in terms of VOCs, it varies by air district. CT: It varies by municipality. In my industry, in the liquid [waste] industry, the EPA has a set standard for certain discharge limits, but every municipality sets its own standards based on what their municipal treatment plant is capable of. So when I sell a piece of equipment to a customer who says “I want to discharge my liquid waste,” I need to find out what the regulations are for that municipality, specifically for that POTW [Publicly Owned Treatment Works], compare it to the MSDS [Material Safety Data Sheet] and the chemical profile after we’ve treated the chemistry, and say, “Yes, you can discharge that liquid because the POTW can treat the effluent stream if we do this and this.” FC: And there’s no federal overall...? CT: No. So every municipality is different. And it’s worldwide. I have the same problem in Australia, the same problem in the UK. There’s no set standard. And there can’t be, because the infrastructure doesn’t exist, not everyone has a modern facility. There are POTWs that are 50, 60, 70 years old that are trying to treat modern industrial waste. But then you have modern facilities that can take care of the heavy metals, they can take care of this. And a lot of the modern POTWs, especially in places like Holland, they’re asking people, “Send us your industrial waste. If it’s got a heavy metal in it, take the heavy metal out. Other than that, send us your industrial waste.” Because what they want is the mud, the sludge, because it’s a high-grade fertilizer. And they’re valuing their sludge. They’re saying, “Give us your crap so we can refine it and make money selling the sludge that you’re sending us.” That’s the whole thing about this “green” thing—there’s technologies out there that can handle the waste we’re producing. So I agree that you should try to reduce the amount of natural resources you’re using in the manufacturing process. That’s just good for business period. And also good for the environment. But you can’t go overboard and get 100% recycled, or 100% reduced or anything like that because to me it’s a non-obtainable goal. SG: We all represent different aspects of the industry but we all face some of the same fundamental problems which is that in a very fragmented and uncertain legislative regulatory environment—and also very fragmented and uncertain standards and certifications—what we in HP do, for a start, is we try to engage with legislative and regulatory authorities to try to help define legislation that we think makes sense. And we try to find a standard or a certification that we think is good. I define a standard that is good as one that is reputable, relevant, rigorous, and recognized widely. If we can find one of those, we try to back it, whether it be an EnergyStar for printing equipment, so that when it’s not printing it goes down to a very low energy state, so you save energy over the course of a year. It’s very hard to find in graphic equipment, it’s really meant for home and office equipment. It’s a U.S. standard, so it meets the reputable test because it’s backed by the U.S. EPA. FC: This is part of the problem. The U.S. and Europe should be on the same page. You’re moving in a certain direction and we can learn from that, and Europe moves in a direction and you can learn from that. SG: EnergyStar is an example of one that, although it’s come out of the U.S., is recognized internationally because it’s the best thing going. And we’d also be very supportive of things like FSC and SFI for paper, and also for the print service providers there is the Sustainable Green Printing (SGP) Partnership, in North America, which is backed by some of the major printing organizations here, and [HP] is a very strong supporter of that standard as well, and it’s about print service providers looking at their total business, all their activities, and measuring and improving them against a starting position. And there are big gaps in the standard landscape and we’re trying to talk to other organizations just to say, can we develop a standard for printing inks, for example, because one doesn’t really exist today. RR: So getting the SGP on board would go a long way toward codifying some of the problems you all have been having figuring out just what green means. SG: For print service providers. It’s not a universal panacea that will solve everybody’s problems, but is in terms of helping major brand owners decide if this print service provider is walking the talk. They say they are sustainable, but are they really? [SGP certification] is relatively rigorous; it takes six to nine months to go through it. FC: Particularly with your global brands that are operating in the U.S. and Europe, there is a sense, particularly in the retail outlets, that there is a sense of continuity. SG: And the standards and certifications help to simplify the marketplace. We backed EnergyStar 20 years ago and now in many requirements for printing or competing equipment you find EnergyStar as the standard for energy consumption. We’d like to see that Sustainable Green Printing Partnership become the standard that certainly North America, and hopefully someday beyond, that the major brands ask for when they define the green standard that they’d like their print providers to work to. FC: Do you think—just to finalize that—that there is a case for a “green summit” in our industry? Just on the basis that there’s a lot of best practices, people have stories to tell, so there’s that aspect of it, just sharing. And then there’s also the sense that if you created some sort of summit, it would actually draw people together and you get the ball rolling to develop some sort of standards. PP: I think that’s really embraceable. I think that’s one of those things that people would like more clarity on. A shared pool of knowledge. FC: That’s what I’m thinking. [to be continued...]