Going Green wraps up this series of interviews with the winners of this year’s Fourth Annual Environmental Innovation Awards with Donald Simard who is the Corporate Director for MRO Procurement, Energy and the Environment for this year’s “Thought Leader” winner, TC Transcontinental. Going Green: TC Transcontinental is probably one of the best-known printers in North America, but just maybe a little background on the company for those who might not be entirely familiar with you guys. Donald Simard: TC Transcontinental is a $2 billion company with 10,000 employees.  We operate 34 printing facilities from the East to West Coast in Canada and the U.S. We are the largest printer in Canada and the fourth in the U.S. We mainly print recurring high-volume printing material for large retailers and publishers, and we also do personalized marketing products. GG: In terms of complying with the various types of environmental legislation that exists in Canada, that exists on sort of a province-by-province basis, and as somebody who spans—and who has facilities in—most of the provinces, how do you coordinate all those efforts when the local legislation tends to vary so much? DS: TC Transcontinental is very diversified so it’s not easy to get everybody on board. Compliance to [local] legislation to assure a system of tracking legislation change uses an online update service and we incorporate the program covering our facility with printing operations. GG: You also have facilities in the United States. Does that add different layers of complexity to coordinating all your various sustainability initiatives? DS: It’s not more complicated for a plant in the U.S. It’s just additional regulation to follow. If I take, for example, the new rule under the CPSIA [Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008], it’s more complicated to clarify what is an ordinary book compared to a book for children aged 4 to 12, then what we have to do to comply.  Fortunately, we have an organization like Printing Industries of America to help us with this kind of problem, thanks to Gary Jones for that. GG: You also have a paper purchasing policy. One of the biggest points of controversy I found on the Going Green blog is that whenever we talk about chain of custody certification programs the commenters chime in and people are very cynical about the process. They don’t always believe that there’s a good way of handling reliable sourcing. What’s TC Transcontinental’s approach to paper sourcing so that they ensure that it’s reliable? DS: It’s important to be able to print the applicable [certification program] logo on the products we produce for our customers. In January 2008, TC Transcontinental obtained a chain of custody classification for its printing facilities testing the standard of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC), and Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) for its Canadian and US printing facilities. Each link in that chain benefited by a chain of custody certificate in order to print the appropriate forestry logo in the printed products, and internal and external audits of our tracking system were performed throughout the year. WhatTheyThink’s Going Green once again congratulates this year’s winners. If you have been inspired by these companies’ initiatives, and have implemented any sustainable programs yourself, think about entering next year’s Environmental Innovation Awards. Applications will be available after the first of the year.