It’s been a well-worn headline for years now: printing’s poor environmental reputation was earned with good reason, and won’t be changed while new media is the new eco-hero in the wider community.
Entwined with the obvious PR dilemma in this misperception is another, more deeply seated problem that the industry is largely unable to repair. Simply put, there’s not a lot more it can do to reduce its environmental footprint in any great measure. The marketing opportunity came and went unheeded.
Environmental researcher and ProPrint columnist Phillip Lawrence says: “The industry has been through massive, massive change. The academic theory is called creative destruction, which is where new technologies come into industries, and in doing so destroy the old industry and create a new industry. Printing has already been through creative destruction. The trouble is it didn’t shout the message, then or now.
“The industry made a transformational change during the 1990s and it all came about because of the digitisation of the industry. The hard yards were done very early and were unrecognised. When people ask what the industry is doing about its environmental performance now, my answer is that it has already been done.
“The problem the industry now faces is identifying where to make the significant cuts that everybody wants in order to make the industry cleaner. The answer is they probably don’t exist.”
In his Master’s Degree thesis, SME Printing Firms: Accidental Environmentalists (2009), Lawrence wrote: “The qualitative and quantitative research found this intensely competitive industry has become significantly less environmentally damaging because printers have been forced to adopt new, highly efficient technologies into their businesses.
“As a result, it is likely that the printing industry has become about 97% less environmentally damaging than the industry was in the Kyoto base year 1990. They have achieved this unintentionally; they are accidental environmentalists.”
Low hanging fruit
Lawrence contends that it wasn’t printers who drove the change. Print firms have only responded because of demands from customers and the develop-ments of equipment manufacturers.
“People argue that the industry has only picked the low hanging fruit [of environmental improvements]. The reason is they had a lot of fruit to pick. The industry shouldn’t necessarily be patting itself on the back. It had to clean up or would have been an environmental disaster.
“The reason the industry pulled itself into the 21st century is not because of the efforts of printers, but the efforts of sup-pliers. My thesis is that the competition between industry suppliers has driven it and printers are the beneficiaries of it.”
Much of that change for the better has been in the pre-press department. The imaging and processing of plates has under-gone a digital change, removing most of the chemicals required. Chemical free and processless plates are now reaching critical mass, and will be ubiquitous in the future, except for very long runs and some quality-critical print work, according to Heidelberg’s CTP and workflow specialist, Dierk Wissmann.
“Chemistry plates are better now than they were, as the chemistry they require is a lot friendlier to the environment. Having said that, I can clearly see a trend of customers moving from chemistry plates to chem-free or completely processless plates, where possible. I could already see this trend in Switzerland, where I used to work before I moved to Australia,” he said.
“I would say roughly about 35-40% of printers are already using chem-free or completely processless plates, and it is certainly increasing. The scepticism still has to go away, but I believe that processless plates would fit into 85% of printers.”
Ferag’s Ian Martin largely agrees with Wissmann that plate technologies have made, and will still make, a difference. “There have been significant developments in the lowering replenishment rates and oxidisation of developers in the past few years so less chemistry is required now to develop a plate, and it also lasts a lot longer and can subsequently develop more plates. Innovations in plate manufacturing mean that some plates can use a ‘water wash out’ solution or indeed utilise the press fountain solution to ‘develop’ the plate on-press,” he tells ProPrint.
Matt Ritson, marketing manager, commercial, at Fujifilm Australia, says the new CTP technology is the obvious move for those who are still “window shopping”.
“Pre-press has become more efficient over recent years with a reduction in waste and chemistry, although there is always more we can do to reduce our impact. With advances in technology, plate manufacturing and processless production, the benefits to printers are building efficiencies within their business. More environmental gains can be made in the pre-press department with processless plates. The efficiencies of chemistry-, water- and gum-free CTP with no need for a plate processor in production are clear.”
In fact, where pre-press was once the low-hanging fruit, the technological leaps over the past decade mean the opposite is true. Bruce Wright of Screen Australia points to plate preparation as a largely reborn process, and says printers need to find other areas for environmental gains.
“Pre-press chemical usage has declined massively over recent years and, at least with Screen’s CTP, so has energy use. Processless and water wash-out plate technology is enjoying a strong take-up by printers. I would say pre-press is no longer a ‘primary culprit’ environmentally; its record stands the test.”
Those printers who haven’t yet investigated the benefits of new technology plates might learn a lesson from Metro Press in Perth. The company achieved excellent environmental results when it changed from polyester to thermal plates after installing a Screen PlateRite 4300E platesetter and Fujifilm XMF workflow Metro managing director Mark Rossiter says: “The main problem was that we were throwing a lot of stuff out. When the polyester plates were finished, they went in the bin, which eventually went to landfill, whereas these metal plates are recyclable. Also, there was a lot of chemistry thrown out, which we had trouble getting rid of, so it went down the drain, which is unacceptable. Now there is no chemistry, so there is no waste.
“Cost was the driving factor in the decision. Everything you throw in the bin you’ve paid for, whether it’s a rag or a chemicals. I don’t think we’d be in business today if we hadn’t done it. It cost a lot of money to put it in, but it costs a lot of money to go out of business too.”
Power cuts
Where can extra environmental gains be found in the pre-press area then, if many printers have already changed their chemical habits? It’s all about power.
“I would suggest most of the achievable gains in the process have been made or are available now, so looking at overall energy savings is a good thing,” says Screen’s Wright. “This includes air-conditioning systems which should be maintained rigorously to ensure optimum operation
at minimum cost. Poorly fitting doors and windows, cleaning of return air filters, annual checks and switching off lighting in areas where no work is being carried out will assist greatly in reducing power bills, and, therefore, CO2 emissions.
“Digital print is a major one as this virtually eliminates traditional pre-press processes. Low power-usage CTP is important. Screen’s PlateRite 8900Z, shown at Drupa, has trimmed power
use by up to 41%.”
Ian Martin suggests correct maintenance of production environments can make a difference.
“An often overlooked area is the cost of controlling the room temperature and humidity, as well as the efficiency of the actual CTP equipment. Better designed rooms and newer equipment also have a significant impact on the overall footprint of the pre-press area. Much of this comes back to the plant design and improvements.”
Heidelberg’s Dierk Wissmann agrees that power consumption is now a major focus in pre-press.
“One area [of improvement] is power for the platemaking process. Heidelberg’s CTP devices, especially the A52 and A75 models, have extremely low power demands. For instance, the Suprasetter uses only four watts in standby, and 550 watts when imaging. To put that in perspective, an average hairdryer uses 1,200 watts.
“And this is despite the fact that Suprasetters have an inbuilt air-conditioner to control the temperature within the device, the result being only a small need to cool the room down, which is another power saving factor,” explains Wissmann.
Digital proofs
Wright also raises the subject of proofing. There has been an almost universal uptake of digital proofing, removing the need to produce most chemical proofs. Even more efficient is the use of soft, or screen, proofs that can be approved for most print work.
“Online proof approvals save energy, fuel, time and money. And wash-ups can now avoid harsh chemicals by substituting ‘green’ cleaning products.”
Phillip Lawrence doesn’t see any more serious environmental headway being made, at least not in the pre-press department. The pressroom still has room for improvement though.
“The low hanging fruit has been picked. We are going to see technology come out that will make a difference, but they’re going to be driven by the printing side, not the pre-press side.
“The things that might occur will be direct imaging on presses, and they’ll open the door to inkjet technologies, which are still probably two Drupas away from absolute commercial reality,
I think,” says Lawrence.
“To reduce their environmental footprint by 10% today, printers will have to be very creative. I think there will be incremental reductions in energy consumption.
“The industry has a phenomenally good story to tell – my research says it is 97% less polluting than it was. It’s going to be really challenging to make inroads into the other 3% without being incredibly creative, and I can’t really imagine how they can do it.”
Case study: Tennyson Group
Tennyson Group, based in Brisbane, has undergone a series of technology changes to improve its environmental performance. It recently changed from using silver plates to chemistry-free Azura Vi plates from Agfa and added an Agfa VCF85 processor. The result is an 85% drop in its use of chemicals.
The move aligns with the company’s gaining level three Sustainable Green Print (SGP) accreditation. But that was not the sole motivation, according to marketing and environ-mental coordinator at Tennyson Group, Ali Simpson.
“It was both an environmental decision and a business decision,” she says. “We were very aware that our CTP system was our main producer of chemical waste, so it was an environmental concern, and the chemicals were expensive to purchase.
“We wanted to improve the efficiency of that area, and in the process we ended up saving a fair bit of money — we didn’t have to buy the chemicals in the first place and we didn’t have to get them recycled afterwards — so eliminating those chemicals has produced good financial and environmental outcomes.”
While the company may be focused on its environmental performance, it has discovered that its clients are too. According to Simpson, customer demand has shifted to one of requiring a green outcome before approval.
“It is definitely customer driven. For a lot of government work, you need these accreditations to be even considered for work. We started our whole green process because we were aware that there were money-saving factors involved and then there was a shift in what customers wanted. Initially it was self-driven, and we continued to go through the process of SGP because of the standards that people were asking of us.
“Now that we’re at level three we’re going to proceed to ISO 14001, which is something we want to do to get our quality assurance and our environmental credentials more aligned.
“Customers do pay attention to environmental credentials. People do come to us because they’ve seen we’re eco-friendly, and that’s one of our main selling points now. It’s a point of difference for us.”
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