Using sources from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), Green Printer estimates that it helped its customers save 74,645 pounds of greenhouse gases and 38,116 pounds of solid waste since the eco-friendly printing company opened in June 2007.

Green Printer is so serious about its environmental stewardship that it actually offers an “Eco-Calculator” that helps its customers calculate how much greenhouse gas and trees they, too, can save by using its services. These savings are achieved, among other things, by using sustainable printing methods (such as waterless printing) and printing on treeless and recycled paper. (See Green Printer’s story.)

This adds a completely new dimension to the issue of socially responsible printing—a more active sense of participation.

As I wrote last week, one of the benefits of using the document management and marketing models driven by digital printing is that you can see the positive impact you are making on the environment by what is missing—piles of wasted inventory, unread mail, and trash cans filled to the brim. But Green Printer offers another way to quantify your impact on the environment, one that allows you to “see” the invisible.

That’s a very powerful motivator to positive social action—to the tune of 74,645 pounds of greenhouse gases so far.

After all, you can’t see the immediate effects of reducing your carbon footprint or reducing your use of virgin paper. When you use the flexibility provided by digital printing technologies to green your print market, you can.

When you move to a full “just in time” inventory management solution, you see empty space in your warehouse instead of stacks of wastestream-clogging paper, books, or leaflets.

Instead of sending 10,000 64-page four-color college coursebooks covering every class known to mankind, you send out 16-page personalized booklets containing only information relevant to each prospective student, you see a tangible reduction in your impact on solid waste—48,000 pages worth.

But do others feel the same way? According to an online “Quick Poll” conducted by Print Buyers Online, a free educational online community, 73% of print buyers do, in fact, feel that sustainability is becoming more important in their companies. This leaves some work yet to be done—26% still say no—but this is an impressive number.

The question is, how is this sustainability being accomplished? Is it “pie in the sky” idealism? Or is it being accomplished through practical, achievable steps?

Greening of print marketing through changing business and marketing models through the use of just in time printing, Web-to-print-driven marketing models, 1:1 (personalized) printing, and others is a practical, achievable step. The question is, if yours is one of the 73% of companies that sees sustainability and environmental issues becoming more important, are you looking at—or overlooking—the real “greening” opportunities print marketing provides?

Let’s kill the business card, the paper one that is.

Why do we need it anyways? It does that hideous bent corner thing when you take out of your wallet (excuse us “Mr. That’s-why-I-get-my-cards-lamented”, you are an exception), the VP of Financial Genius gets tossed next to the Hatha yoga instructor and besides, that font you chose, with painstaking care, is ugly anyways.

Like Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief of NextWeb.org, I feel impelled to stop the “ruthless hitmen” and their budding online appetites to belittle and ultimately, kill the paper business card and switch to rmbrME’s bzCard or some other gadget.

Little surprise, most visitors, many with entrepreneurial backgrounds, on the original TechCrunch post by Jason Kincaid weren’t too fond of the whole “death warrant” idea.

“You guys need to get out of the [Silicon] [V]alley more. The business card, and your other page view bloating proclamation about voicemail, is not going away any time soon. You do realize that most business people only use their phone for voice calls and e-mail? Most business people don’t even belong to a “social network.”"

- Alex Valentine

“Most successful people I know simply don’t own a computer, sure as hell not a cell phone. There is no substitute for a business card in the real world.”

- Anderson

“They’re clumsy? What is that supposed to mean? They’re pieces of paper.They’re easy to lose? When did pants stop sporting pockets? Useless? Do the words fall off if the card is shaken or something? And seriously? Trying to throw in the “it’s the green thing to do” line? Come on. That line is wearing thin.”

- David H.

Now, from a sustainability in business perspective, the bzCard (or other eCard, vCard, etc.) can save paper, save trees and contribute to cuts in greenhouse emissions, right?

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Did you know that by making some basic changes in your document management and print marketing, you can reduce your carbon footprint, use fewer trees, use less petroleum, and improve your bottom line at the same time? In today’s time of financial crisis, that ought to get any company’s attention. It starts, not with the paper or ink you spec, but with the fundamental way you print at your documents.

By utilizing today’s digital production technologies, you can move to document management models that have a major impact on the environment. By printing shorter runs—even for high-quality, four-color documents—you eliminate warehousing costs and the cost of outdated print, but on the environmental side, you avoid cutting down trees for nothing. Every time a book, a pamphlet, a flyer goes out of date and gets thrown in the trash, you just contributed to needless deforestation.

By making smarter use of your database—say, mailing to only the top 10% of your customer base—you reduce the amount of printed material you use. If you combine it with smart use of print personalization, you could earn even more revenues than on a larger static mailing.

Some great examples can be found in a new report on digital-printing-driven marketing models entitled “Digital Printing: Transforming Business and Marketing Models,” released yesterday.

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Wall Street is in financial crisis. Individual investors are reeling. The world is watching. If ever there were a time to get serious about our world stewardship, it’s now.

While we’re used to thinking along broad, expansive lines such as international policy and national priorities, the fact is, there are changes you and I can make in our daily lives to make things better, including in the world of marketing. We don’t have to change the world. We just have to change our world.

That’s what “Greening Print Marketing” is about.

Along those lines, I got a press release from Xerox today. The company has released a new series of papers and tools to help companies reduce the environmental impact of printing in their organizations. This starts a comprehensive program of papers, resources, and Web tools to help customers identify the right paper, the right supplies, and the right way to print with the environment in mind.

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It’s no secret: businesses who build durable internal systems breed long term and sustainable profits.

In fact, the rule on the street, and this applies to enterprising green businesses who are past their mainstream ‘breaking point’ and are now swimming with the rest of the so-called ’sharks’, is often ‘automate or perish’.

But automation (business speak for “doing it better and faster”) is hardly a Darwinian one-way street – eco-minded companies are benefiting more than just their own bottom line by developing or partnering to develop software that automates green decision making: they are greening entire industries.

And, the three who are doing it – Green Printer, Workforce Software and Sustainable Minds – have a lot to share on what it takes to get there.

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Solvent-based inks are used in other digital production processes—most visibly wide-format inkjet used for applications like banners, vehicle wraps, and signage—and those presses release VOCs and require venting. What makes ElectroInk different?

From an environmental marketing perspective, not all solvents are created equal. In the wide-format/display environment, the inks need to perform two Herculean tasks.

1. They must adhere securely to non-paper substrates like vinyl.
2. They often must be lightfast.

If they are used for applications like vehicle wraps, they must do both.

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A www.greenprinteronline.com dispatch | You cannot stop a negative habit without knowing how much and how often you are doing it. Enter the financial “carrot”: the online environmental calculator with a finance edge. True, we at Green Printer believe that public demand, employee engagement, shareholder interest and sustainability goals are the “pressure points” for companies to cut their consumption habits and curb greenhouse gas emissions.

But today, organizations like Xerox, RecycleBank and Creative Citizen are offering more than just a climate change reason to decrease consumption: money. And, they are doing it by showing your employees the financial figures generated in conjunction with their online, environmental calculators.

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If you want to “green” your print marketing, one way to do it is to print using digital production printing. How is digital production “green”?

There are three types of digital print production:

• Dry toner (xerography)
• Liquid toner (used exclusively in the HP Indigo presses)
• Continuous inkjet (used both for light production and high-volume presses)

Because of the number of variables that impact the lifecycle of a printed product, and because of the strides being made by offset printers to green their operations, it is difficult—if not impossible—to make a categorical statement that “digital production is greener than offset.” However, there are some unequivocal factors about digital print that will please those looking to become more environmentally sensitive in their production and management of print.

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This is important to marketers because environmental printing is no longer just good social responsibility. It’s good marketing. Companies with “green” programs have a marketing advantage through positive association. By utilizing environmentally responsible printing practices, this gives you a nice plug for your business.

How is digital printing “green”?

1. The output technology is socially responsible. 1:1 printing is output from digital presses. These presses use no process chemicals (although liquid ink presses and inkjet presses may use solvents in their ink formulations; dry toner presses do not). They use no film or plates. Start-up waste is minimal—10 sheets or less, compared to 100 or more sheets for most offset presses.

Although conventional wisdom is that digital inks are difficult to remove during the recycling process, this is outdated. An increasing number of digital press manufacturers are now promoting the de-inkability of their toners, even from recycled paper. This is true even of HP, whose liquid toner “ElectroInk” produces at or near offset-quality photographic quality but is suspended in a mild solvent, and even of high-speed inkjet presses like Kodak Versamark.

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Independent Printing has started a blog at www.designed2print.wordpress.com, which has a number of good articles on the changes in the printing industry. The site covers how Independent Printing is staying ahead of the curve by offering not only Forest Stewardship Council paper and vegetable based inks, but also switching to green energy for their plants.

Our number one seller from Independent Printing is their Enviro-binder.

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One reason many businesses hesitate to “go green” is because environmental responsibility seems too time-consuming and overwhelming.  It’s not that they don’t care. It’s that, with all of their other responsibilities, it seems like too much.

Just the thought of measuring the corporate environmental footprint—from measuring the carbon output of every office copier to the impact of the transportation methods of employees—is enough to send the poor manager tasked with the job into apoplexy.

But while “going green” may seem overwhelming, in reality, I see it as being a lot like my relationship with my dishwasher.

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My assumption is that kids are already well ahead of their parents in terms of incorporating green living (with less fuss than adults) into their lives and those of their peers. In fact, kids often pressure parents to recycle, according to a study published in the BBC.

Still, raising children to be good citizens and those that can quickly make the link between paper usage, recycling, deforestation, government action and climate change later in their life (I coin these savvy “Forest Citizens”) is not easy but it is well worth it on many levels. Here is who we are watching to help us raise good Forest Citizens as we embark on the craziness of the school year:

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You run an sustainable organization, receive referrals from the Internet and want a brand that’s memorable. You also want to automate your web traffic.

Enter the green widget - a ‘brand confirming’ tool you can’t overlook. If you have a brand, says Stefan Juhl, a widget will only confirm (or make others more aware of) your brand values. So, what is a widget anyway? Erick Schonfeld explains and Max Gladwell defines the role of a widget as one of the many tools a social (change) media practitioner can employ.

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Myth no. 1: The paper production industry is low on the GHG emitter totem pole.
Not so, actually the paper and pulp industry is the third largest polluter in both Canada and the United States. The Green Press Initiative (GPI) states that one of the biggest benefits of using recycled fiber is that it emits 38 percent less GHGs. Recycled fiber also uses 44 percent less energy to produce, and conserves up to 34 mature trees for every ton replacing virgin fiber.

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This week, greenwash fatigued bloggers (Gawker describes it as improbable a real news item as ‘the hot dog industry going vegetarian’) and non-profit spokespersons turned a skeptical eye on a group of direct marketing companies called the Green Marketing Coalition (GMC). Corporate clients, including Microsoft, Washington Mutual and OptimaHealth, are also in on the initiative.

GMC’s goal? Altruistic enough. According to the New York Times article “Direct marketing goes green. No, really”, these marketers are joining hands and taking small, albeit very conservative, steps to make an inherently unsustainable practice (i.e. sending wads of personal junk mail) at least a little bit greener. We have already written about junk mail solutions and naughty, catalogue-sending companies before and so we were curious about what best practices the industry funded group came up with.

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Mandy Haggith with the ‘paper mountain’ she built to show what a year’s waste looks like. Photo by Angus Bruce, The Independent

“The paperless-society goal is a very nice and noble one,” said Arpad Horvath, an associate professor at the University of California-Berkeley who has studied the issue of replacing paper with wireless technologies. “Unfortunately, I don’t see any trace of progress toward it.”

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A Green Printer dispatch.

According to Patricia Calkins, Xerox vice-president for Environment, Health and Safety, being smarter about paper use is a win for the environment and for the bottom line, so it is no surprise businesses would zero in on improving their performance in that area.

While long an “evangelist” for greener operations, Xerox is, at its core, a global document management company, which manufactures and sells a range of color and black-and-white printers, multifunction systems, digital production printing presses, and related consulting services and supplies.

And so, the question that Jeff McIntire-Strasburg asked in April still hovers: “can a company that manufactures copy machines, and sells more paper than any other single brand, really walk the talk on sustainable business practices?”

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What does a leader in business that moves us “far, fast” towards our sustainability goals look like? It’s a relevant question to our pressing need for solutions and Nicola Acutt, Ph.D. writes a “bang on” response to it.

Borrowing from a recent Al Gore speech, Accult asserts that “as people grasp the magnitude and speed of change needed to address the environmental, social and economic issues that we face, there is a growing need for leaders who take us ‘far, fast’”.

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You’ve started a green team and seven weeks later, your once ecstatic committee of cubicle warriors by day, green champions by night (a.k.a your green employees) begin to dwindle in numbers. Even the most eager employees look like they would prefer to be idling in traffic than be here listening to your green pitch.

Preston Koerner wrote a valuable article in Green Biz on how to prevent “green fatigue” and separate it from the “green noise” amongst customers in response to a recent commentary on eco-overload in the New York Times.

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