Here you will find blogs from Digital Dots and Verdigris covering technology and sustainability advances in the graphics industry over the last 25 years.
The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner There are plenty of organisations offering to sell you an ecolabel of some description. But many of these are self-certified labels that actually have little meaning. Their adjudicators are happy to take your money, but do little to make any real difference to the environmental impact of products … Read more
The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner Working out if it’s better for the planet to communicate in print, or to do it digitally just got easier, sort of. ISO standards developers working on documents for graphics technologies, have written a document for calculating the carbon footprint of electronic media. ISO 20294 is moving into … Read more
The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner By all accounts the textile printing business is set to explode, thanks to digital printing technologies. For instance Fibre2fashion, analysts for the fashion industry, reckon that in 2017 the amount of fabric printed digitally will be more than one billion square metres and reach 2.5 billion square metres … Read more
The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner The problem is not unique to digital presses, but how do you measure energy usage and the overall energy efficiency of a machine? With cars the most usual method is the miles per gallon, or how many litres of fuel it takes to travel 100 kilometres. Just in … Read more
The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner Guilt is a powerful driver for improving environmental impacts and recycling in particular. The paper industry has done a great job in teaching consumers that paper should not be thrown away, because it can be recycled. They have also done a great job in teaching people that resources … Read more
The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner As digital printing keeps up its steady march across the graphics landscape, it’s easy to forget about progress in conventional print. In addition to improvements in makeready times and energy efficiency on press, great strides have been made with consumables, especially printing plate technologies. Most attention gets paid … Read more
The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner The Fespa show in Hamburg last week brought together a huge lineup of players. They came from all parts of the sign and display business, including digital wide format and screen printing technology providers and users. The textile printing system makers and buyers were also out in force, … Read more
The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner Last time we checked there were almost five hundred different eco labels around the world. Most of them applied to food and coffee, or soil or some such. But a handful, such as the Nordic Swan, apply to any type of business, including the graphics industry. The Nordic … Read more
The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner It’s not unusual to encounter examples of environmental ignorance or to hear alarming comments from people who should know better. We experienced both in a recent meeting whilst discussing the need for environmental standards in the graphics industry. We were told in no uncertain terms that environmental science … Read more
The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner We all know what happens to printed paper when it’s sent off for recycling. It either gets burnt or sent for processing into new materials, but when old computers reach end of life, matters are less simple. Reducing the amount of electronic and electrical material that ends up … Read more