More than 200 designers, corporate marketers, and printers packed the hall at Simon Fraser University in downtown Vancouver on November 19. The room was full and they all wanted to know: how do I design, spec, produce, and use print in the most environmentally responsible way? Runningreen, an Eco Printing Infoforum, was focused primarily on paper – its manufacture and reuse – because it is a key component of printed graphic communications; only a small percentage of printed material consists of ink or toner on a substrate other than paper.

Paper, paper, paper… How much, what types, and where does it go? Each year the city of Seattle alone generates over 400,000 tons of paper or 53 percent of the total 750,000 tons of waste generated in the city. Over 70 percent of that paper comes from businesses. Of the total tonnage, about 60 percent will be recycled. The rest of it makes it way to the landfill. It can get expensive to throw all that paper away! For any given print job, the cost of the paper may account for 30-50 percent of the overall project cost. Because paper is key to all things printed, it's clearly in everybody's best interest to pay close attention to how it's used – and any process that uses paper sensibly, saves money.

Nicole Rycroft, Markets Initiative