A Matter of Policy

The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner Sustainability starts at home but it is surprising how many companies don’t have a company sustainability policy. A sustainability policy is a bit like a mission statement in that it provides a commitment to an ideal or at least to a goal. Like a mission statement though a … Read more

Tiny Steps Turn into Strides

The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner For many consumers battling with economic hardship, the environment has fallen down their list of priorities. But businesses seem not to be losing faith in such numbers. Those printing companies who are managing to keep their heads above water, have got the message the reducing environmental impact is … Read more

The European Union’s Ecolabel

The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner After many years of prognostication the European Union has published its specification for an Ecolabel for products and services, excluding food and pharmaceuticals. This is a voluntary label designed to promote improved environmental performance. The idea is that consumers will choose products and services whose environmental impact on … Read more

Seven Cardinal Innovations for a Sustainable Planet

The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner The graphic arts industry often gets slammed for the waste and excess emissions it generates. Yet the printing industry is already implementing the Seven Cardinal Innovations as outlined by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research. This organisation is heavy on research and academics, but has a proactive engagement … Read more

Deinking Drama

The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner It seems we rather hit a nerve with last week’s blog which isn’t so very surprising. That’s the trouble with blogging: not much room to develop an argument or adequately cover all sides of a problem. The blog’s purpose had been to highlight the dangers of denigrating digital … Read more

Deinking Myths & Magic

The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner Let’s be clear: consumers don’t care about how materials get recycled, as long as they can be recycled. The important point for all of us in the printing industry is that anything corrosive to the credibility of printed paper recycling undermines the industry’s longterm survival. Challenging the recyclability … Read more

Benny & the Jets?

The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner The indefatigable Benny Landa is on the road to promote his Nanograpic printing technology, an amazing implementation of piezo inkjet. This technology is set (according to Benny) to revolutionise the printing industry, creating a new category of print that has all the benefits of conventional offset, but with … Read more

The CEPI Plan for 2050

The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner The International Panel on Climate Change states in its fourth assessment report that “a sustainable forest management strategy aimed at maintaining or increasing forest carbon stocks, while producing an annual sustained yield of timber, fibre or energy from the forest, will generate the largest sustained mitigation benefit”. If … Read more

EcoPrint Counting Down

The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner In a couple of weeks the inaugural EcoPrint show in Berlin will be over. What will it have achieved? Well, we can expect the usual boasts about visitor numbers that exceeded expectations and how everyone at the show was an important decision maker. Blah. Blah. So much so … Read more

Sustainability Becoming a Way of Life

The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner It used to be that the market leader in an industry was the company with the biggest market share and the greatest financial clout. But times are changing and sustainability policy is part of the new barometer. Some manufacturers serving the printing and publishing industries have long been … Read more