(October 09, 2008) The graphic arts industry continues to rally around sponsorship of the 2nd Annual "The Business of Green Media" sustainability conference that will be conducted by Cal Poly and SustainCommWorld on January 22, 2009.

This year's conference is being highly supported by printers and press manufacturers, traditional and digital.

Sponsors to date are AdMail, Heidelberg, HP/Indigo, Kodak, manroland, Utah Paperbox, RR Donnelley, and Cal Poly's College of Liberal Arts. Media sponsors are Graphic Arts Monthly and Recharge Asia Magazine. The Gravure Association of America is an association sponsor. Others are pending.

The latest sponsors are RR Donnelley and manroland.

RR Donnelley has been a long standing advocate of sustainability and recently announced that an additional fifteen of its printing facilities across the United States have achieved Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) chain of custody certifications. Through a "reduce-reuse-recycle" model, RR Donnelley printing processes and products address concern for environmental conservation and protection.

John Paloian, RR Donnelley's Chief Operating Officer said, "Resource sustainability has long been a priority throughout RR Donnelley's global operations, and we are proud to support Cal Poly's efforts to heighten industry-wide awareness of the importance of this issue."

Roland Ortbach, Vice President, Corporate and Commercial Web Sales manroland, Inc., North America, said, "Since the 1980's, environmental management has been central to manroland's press manufacturing process and we received multiple awards for manufacturing achievements. One was the 'Highlight Award' from the Hessian Environment Alliance in 2007 (Germany) for the reduction of energy consumption by 30 percent since the year 2000."

Ortbach points out that, "manroland has also achieved quality management systems and international industrial certifications for energy conservation, minimizing production waste, minimizing CO2 emissions, 'QuickChange Color,' filtration of dampening solutions, ink mist exhausting, reduction of VOC emission, efficient drying systems, and for cooling and control of print units. Today we continue to provide awareness of sustainability in press manufacturing and for the entire life cycle of the printing process. We are committed to providing technology that eliminates waste in the printing process."

Harvey Levenson, department head of Cal Poly's Graphic Communication Department, said, "This conference is shaping up to be truly unique and will address issues of interest to the commercial printing industry and its vendors, and to the inkjet and toner industry. As inkjet and toner becomes increasingly used in commercial printing, sustainable practices when using these products become increasingly important. Print buyers increasingly want to deal with vendors that address sustainability. This conference will help companies achieve such visibility."

The conference will explore the current state of the graphic arts regarding sustainable products, certifications and solutions, sustainability shakeouts, carbon footprinting, life cycle analysis of print and digital media, sustainability dashboards, environmental management systems, lean green media, chain of custody and EcoLabels, sustainability reporting and sustainable business practices, marketing of sustainable print solutions, and what lies ahead on the horizon. In addition, the conference will address local, statewide and federal government regulations and expectations, and provide advice on compliance.

The conference is followed by a "Sustainability Banquet" at the Embassy Suites in San Luis Obispo. The banquet speaker will be Roger Ynostroza who for over 30 years was the editor-in-chief of Graphic Arts Monthly and is the present editor of Gravure Magazine.

For information on becoming a conference sponsor and on sponsor benefits, contact Lyndee Sing of the Graphic Communication Institute at Cal Poly at 805-756-2645 ([email protected]) or Harvey Levenson at 805-756-6151 ([email protected]).

Registration for the conference begins Oct. 15 at www.BusinessOfGreenMedia.com. For information regarding registrations, contact Kathleen Kaiser at SustainCommWorld, 805-524-6970 ([email protected]).