Tomorrow is Earth Day, so it seemed like a good opportunity to catch up with Marci Kinter, Vice President of Government & Regulatory Affairs at PRINTING United Alliance and Secretary & Vice Chair Technical for the Sustainable Green Printing Partnership (SGP), a non-profit organization that certifies printing and packaging facilities’ and their suppliers’ sustainability best practices, including—and even exceeding—regulatory compliance. SGP certification has become the gold standard for validating print businesses’ sustainability practices.

WhatTheyThink: As we know, since we’ve been involved with this topic for a long time now, industry attitudes toward sustainability tend to ebb and flow with the economy. When things are good, printers are looking to “green” their processes, and when things get bad, they are more focused on cutting costs or improving productivity. What have you found to be the current status of sustainability pre- and post-pandemic?

Marci Kinter: During the pandemic, SGP continued to certify and recertify facilities, so we didn’t really see a slowdown in the interest in sustainability within the print industry. If anything, we saw more of a reliance on it and, if anything, the emphasis on it has increased. In 2021, when we were on the waning side of the pandemic, we saw quite a few brand owners reaching out to us to ask about printing and to start looking at their print supply chains. And then of course you had the SEC issue their carbon disclosure rules for public companies, so now everyone is trying to determine how to calculate their carbon footprint.