Be Green to Be Seen

The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner Every time we go to a trade show it seems the amount of greenwash sloshing about gets thicker and sloppier. And although it might not seem so, this is a good thing. It’s good because it reflects suppliers’ and manufacturers’ awareness that they need to be green to … Read more

Green the New Gold

The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner Fespa opens its doors this week and includes an impressive array of environmental content. For instance, Caldera will be showing an inRIP carbon footprint calculator and there will be a glut of new environmentally friendly, UV curing digital presses on show. Fespa has attracted audiences from all over … Read more

The Economics of Green

The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner Ideals are all well and good but at the end of the day businesses exist to make the money that keeps economies afloat. Carbon calculating and offsetting exist in order to enhance the business. As someone at Mondi’s Green Event said earlier this spring, “green is about being … Read more

Going Green in Guandong

The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner Shenzhen Polytechnic based in Guandong province in southern China was founded in 1993 and now caters for over 24,000 students. It has multiple colleges and over one thousand courses covering a range of vocational and academic subjects. The School of Media and Communications has 55 professors and a … Read more

Newspaper Plant Efficiency

The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner Newspapers tell us they have had a rough ride over the last few years, and yet they still manage to turn a tidy profit. So it is good to hear examples of newspaper publishers greening up their acts, even if they are still pretty isolated events. Josef Schließ … Read more

Get Your Factories in Shape

The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner Energy emissions are obviously fundamental to any carbon footprint calculation, regardless of industry sector. Apart from improving carbon footprint energy management saves money. Manufacturing emissions are generally massive in scale so for the printing and publishing industries it is more than a good idea for manufacturers to promote … Read more

ISO 16759 Approved!

The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner After what feels like forever but what is really only a couple of years, ISO 16759 (Quantification and communication of the carbon footprint of print media products), has been approved. Yay!!  This is very exciting, but it marks only the beginning of an important journey for our industry. … Read more

European Sustainability Simmering for All

The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner The European Commission is turning up the heat on its sustainability policies, so the rest of the world should take note since it will affect international trade. We heard about the EU’s Product Carbon Footpring (PCF) and Organisational Carbon Footprint (OCF) earlier this year. Neither are regulations yet … Read more

The Beast that is the European Union’s Eco-Label

Introduced on the 16th August 2012, the European Union EcoLabel is a voluntary scheme designed so that consumers can identify products and services that have a reduced environmental impact. The EcoLabel is based on life cycle analysis and is increasingly appearing on products. Most visible are textiles, many of them from India produced for European … Read more

Tougher Than It Looks

The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner When standards makers started working on ISO 16759 for quantifying the carbon footprint of print media, there were two primary reference documents: PAS 2050 and a working draft of what was supposed to become ISO 14067. Both documents were written to help companies quantify and calculate the carbon … Read more