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 the world and has put together a series of sustainability fact sheets to help visitors get started with implementing a green agenda. The fact sheets cover the hows and whys of going green, and there is a guide for implementation plus some random facts about the business benefits of sustainability. The Fespa Planet Friendly team will be on hand to answer questions international visitors may have.

The organisers have put together an afternoon of sessions looking at sustainability in the printing industry as part of the Fespa Jet Set conference programme. We are involved in this and looking forward to presenting ISO 16759 to the audience and to answering questions about its implementation and likely impact. One company has already started the process of getting their carbon calculator certified to the standard but, as they say, one swallow doth not a summer make. It could be that ISO 16759 falls completely flat, but hopefully this won’t be the case.

We will have some environmental case studies to discuss in the Jet Set Sustainability Stream. Banner Box and Greenhouse Graphics have both seen profits improve as a result of their green initiatives. Greenhouse Graphics has even won a Queen’s Award, so we are keen to learn how they reached such giddy heights! As well as case studies we’ve a generous sprinkling of how to manage supply chains for improved efficiency and reduced environmental impact with a couple of consultants and Fespa UK’s very own Peter Kiddell. We wrap up the session with a panel discussion, which we very much hope will have hefty audience input.

For those printers and print buyers who prefer to have a less public conversation, Fespa’s environmental guru Paul Machin will be available to answer specific questions on health, safety and the environment. Paul is a scarily brainy man who seems to have devoted his life to improving print’s environmental impact. He is an advisor to the European Union’s Environmental Agency and works with industry associations to make sure that the printing industry’s interests are represented at government level.

However Fespa is brimming with ideas and includes all sorts of other distractions to keep visitors on their toes. We very much hope that the economics of environmental impact is compelling enough to entice them to the Jet Set conferences. That might be wishful thinking given the huge amount of hardware and software innovation on display. But we are ever optimists, so we hope to see you this week in London.
 

– Laurel Brunner

Verdigris supporters who make the blog possible: Agfa Graphics (www.agfa.com), Digital Dots (www.digitaldots.org), drupa (www.drupa.com), EFI (www.efi.com), EcoPrint (www.ecoprintshow.com), Fespa (www.fespa.com), Heidelberg (www.uk.heidelberg.com), HP (www.hp.com), Kodak (www.kodak.com/go/sustainability), Pragati Offset (www.pragati.com), Ricoh (www.ricoh.com), Unity Publishing (http://unity-publishing.co.uk) and Xeikon (www.xeikon.com)