PrintingNews.com

I know you are being inundated with environmental pressures at home and at work. The media's cup is overflowing with green statistics, and even your youngest children and grandchildren have taken up the cause.

That's why I'd like to cut to the chase and tell you, in just the time it takes to read this article, why environmental issues are impacting printers, and how you can be prepared. The fact is that viability in today's marketplace requires responsibility for environmental and social impacts. Attention to environmental issues in the workplace is quickly becoming the norm, and not the exception.

If you do nothing else, take with you just these two essential acronyms: EMS and SGP. These stand for Environmental Management System and the Sustainable Green Printing Partnership. Your organization will benefit if you implement EMS, and the SGP Partnership—made up of founding members PIA/GATF, SGIA, and FTA, and new members NAPIM and EMA.

On the Same Green Page

First, where are your customers in all of this? They are also vulnerable, and now responding, to environmental pressures—and rapidly increasing numbers of them are creating their own corporate sustainability programs and demanding the same from their supply chains, including printers.

Visit the Web sites of your major customers to see how they are positioning themselves relevant to green initiatives. These are the ones who have likely already asked how you are incorporating sustainability at your company.

You may even be one of the growing number of printers receiving formal sustainability questionnaires from customers. As their level of sophistication increases, along with stricter regulatory requirements, it is not hard to imagine that, eventually, all customers will utilize questionnaires and/or visits to printing operations to ensure compliance with policies.

Second, let's look at lingo. While the terms 'green' and 'sustainable' are being used interchangeably, they actually mean two different things. Green refers to the environmental aspects of the printed product and the process, while sustainability refers to the entire operation and its support systems. A short definition of sustainability is the ability to manufacture and distribute products so they do not diminish natural resources, and are not harmful to human life and ecosystems while maintaining biodiversity.

The Environmental Protection Agency defines sustainability as "the ability to achieve continuing economic prosperity while protecting the natural systems of the planet and providing a high quality of life for its people. Achieving sustainable solutions calls for stewardship, with everyone taking responsibility for solving the problems of today and tomorrow—individuals, communities, businesses, and governments are all stewards of the environment."