RIT’s Printing Industry Center has just made available to the public a brace of monographs that look at the impact of print on the environment. The first, “Exploring Existing Measures of Environmental Impacts of Print: A Survey of Existing Practices,” written by Eni Gambeta, Marcos Esterman, and Sandra Rothenberg, is gleaned from a survey that was conducted on the state of sustainability practices in the printing industry. Some of the findings:

• An unexpectedly large fraction of respondents (27%) did not have a sustainability policy in place. Of the companies with policies, almost all addressed environmental areas, while the majority addressed economic and social areas.
• [A] relatively large fraction of respondents (46%) were not actively developing sustainability-related metrics, while only 35% and 47% had reported activity on LCA and carbon footprinting, respectively.
• Survey results also indicated a somewhat insular approach to sustainability metric development and use, with a high potential for inconsistency.

The report is available as a PDF here. The second monograph, “Life Cycle Analysis in the Printing Industry: A Review,” written by Justin Bousquin, Marcos Esterman, and Sandra Rothenberg, is a “meta-analysis” of 14 life cycle analysis studies. “[A] variety of topics related to imaging equipment were compared in order to identify common practices, limitations, and areas for improvement and standardization.” Some of the findings:

• Like most LCAs, those performed in the printing industry still lack reliable data for the early life cycle and end-of-life of paper. Some uncertainty issues can be solved by increasing data and data transparency through the inclusion of metadata or reviews.
• Products have diverse functional values beyond simple document production, and these need to be considered in addition to LCA results when making design decisions. Standardization of the functional unit and its included assumptions has a high potential to increase quantitative comparability across studies. At the same time, caution must be taken not to use “paper” to define the imaging device’s function, allowing for the inclusion of alternative media in the comparison.
• Consumables should continue to be examined closely. Ink and toner advancements and alternatives have potential to make improvements in less popular impact categories.

The report is available as a PDF here. Thanks to Adam D. for the tip.   RIT has a wealth of other reports and monographs on the topic of sustainable print. Hours can be spent starting here.