To spotlight our Third Annual Environmental Innovation Awards, for the next several weeks, we will be looking back at previous winners.
There is a fifth Environmental Innovation Award that we bestow on what we consider to be a sustainability “thought leader,” a company that best represents the “new green graphic arts company” among all applicants. The recipient of this award is a truly innovative, disruptively-creative company.
Our 2010 thought leader was Parsippany, NJ’s
EarthColor, a network of companies and facilities that offers offset printing (sheetfed and web), digital printing (including print-on-demand and variable data printing), data management and analytics, in-house bindery, fulfillment, and lettershop services.
Everything EarthColor does throughout its network is targeted toward maximizing efficiency and sustainability. It does this through an in-house program called DEPCOR, which integrates sustainable design, engineering, procurement, consumption, and recycling. The idea of the program is to evaluate the life cycle assessment of products and materials used and produced.
In a
2010 interview with Going Green, David Podmayersky, Director of Sustainability for EarthColor, said:
EarthColor’s core mission and values include a genuine commitment to sustainable and responsible business practices. This commitment is part of the company’s business culture and is readily supported by our Chief Executive Officer along with all senior management. It is simply the way we do business.
A representative handful of EarthColor’s sustainability initiatives and their benefits that won them the 2010 EIA include:
- Greenhouse Gas Management Plan
- Tri-Certified in International Forestry Standards including FSC, SFI and PEFC
- Comprehensive Wood Pulp & Paper Merchandise Management Policy
- EarthAware® Paper—the first carbon-managed web paper on the market
- Successful Employment of Green Chemistry Principles
- Water-less Printing Capabilities
- 99% of EarthColor’s manufacturing waste is recycled
- Zero storm water run-off
- State-of-the-art technology innovation for on-site real-time greenhouse gas sequestration
- Minimized airborne emissions
- Partnered with leading NGOs supporting forest conservation, sustainable development and poverty-alleviation
Where are they now?
Going Green caught up with David Podmayersky, who told us that since last year the company has been working on no fewer than four primary initiatives:
- Involvement with CanopyPlanet.org, which negotiated for the Boreal Agreement with paper merchants and others in the paper supply chain to protect old-growth forests, and “protect massive amounts of acreage.” Part of this initiative is their agricultural residue project, which seeks to create paper out of wheat.
- “Carbon neutralize the print supply chain,” by looking at logistics, transportation, and other elements.
- Participate in the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development (MACED) project that purchases carbon offsets from landowners in the Appalachian Mountains as a way of helping local and poor communities keep from succumbing to the temptation to sell their lands to mining and forestry companies, and this prevent hilltop destruction. EarthColor is also supporting similar programs in the Allegheny Mountains.
- The D2 Mail project, which is a major cradle-to-grave examination of the total environmental impact of a direct mail campaign.
So they have a few things going on..
We will be profiling other past winners in upcoming Going Green posts.
Applications are now being accepted for the 2011 Environmental Innovation Awards. Download applications here.
