Unilever and Veolia cooperate to improve recycling infrastructures

The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner After so many years of environmental dithering, things are starting to move and change is coming. Unilever, one of the world’s largest corporations has signed an important deal with Veolia. This company provides services to local governments specifically in water, waste, transport and energy management. Unilever, a huge … Read more

Growing momentum for recycling commitments

The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner Kraft Heinz is the world’s fifth-largest food and beverage company, so it buys an awful lot of print. Recently Kraft Heinz has been paying more attention to its environmental impact, specifically its recycling objectives.  Under its new CEO Bernardo Hees, CEO, the company has renewed its sustainability commitments. … Read more

Plastics pollution being tackled

The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner If you’ve got an interest in the packaging business, be that as a manufacturer or converter, you need to know about the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s new coalition. Launched in 2010, the Ellen MacArther Foundation works with governments, industry and academia to develop an economic framework that is designed … Read more

Nano particles in inks

The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner Amazing innovations are going on with inks as the graphics industry works to maintain its competiveness and improve environmental impacts. Nano inks are used for printed electronics, sensors and ceramics printing. For a few years now they have been used for commercial and packaging printing, on the basis … Read more

Deinking plastics

The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner Despite all the excitement about cutting out plastic, it’s unrealistic to think that all printed plastics will disappear. However it’s not unrealistic to start thinking about improved collection and recycling models for them. This is a massive problem and one that impacts printers in the packaging and sign … Read more

Printing Industry’s Association of Australia’s 10 years of environmental and sustainability leadership

The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner It’s wonderful to get a response to the Verdigris blogs, especially responses pointing out mistakes. We’ve had a correction relating to the serial rant about how industry associations don’t do enough to support sustainability and the environment, so we’d like to set the record straight. The serial rant … Read more

First Certification to ISO 20690 (Determination of the operating power consumption of digital printing devices)

The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner As certifications go, this is probably not desperately exciting to most people. But to the people behind the document (including me), it is very exciting indeed, especially since SwissQPrint, a leading manufacturer of large format digital printers, has achieved certification within a few months of the document’s publication. … Read more

It’s Still All About the Data

The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner For many years now the graphics industry has benefited from cloud computing, initially with the Software-as-a-Service model pioneered by Agfa and latterly with a growing range of subscriber based cloud services. Adobe started the cloud ball rolling some years ago with CSS subscriptions and HP has developed the … Read more

Spreading the sustainability message – Part 4

The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner This is the fourth part of a series of blogs suggesting ideas for topics addressed in environmental policy statements. Industry associations serving the needs of journalists, illustrators, designers, authors, publishers, printers and so on are largely passive when it comes to improving environmental impacts. In the previous blogs … Read more

Spreading the sustainability message – Part 3

The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner In our first blog on getting industry associations to encourage wider sustainability awareness, we put the three Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, at the top of the list. But sector specific environmental impact and sustainability policy statements need much more. Graphic industry sectors such as newspapers, magazines, book and … Read more