According to Laurel Brunner of the Verdigris Project, companies wanting to learn about the environment and print’s impact on it have ample choice to meet their carbon footprinting needs. Almost every day another consulting group states that they can help printing companies become more environmentally accountable. Offerings range from some sort of sustainability scheme or […]
According to Laurel Brunner from the Verdigris Project, printers everywhere should be looking more closely at processless plate technology. It cuts out a step in production, reduces chemistry and waste and lets headcount be redeployed. The uptake of processless printing plates is finally starting to really gain pace, which is great news for the environment. […]
According to Laurel Brunner of the Verdigris Project, the recycling of smart packaging is obviously a murky topic, which is perhaps why relatively little has been heard about smart packaging applications of late. That is until now. A few years ago there was a bit of a buzz around intelligent packaging. The excitement was based […]
Consider the tube used to package Pringles crisps. Its design presents considerable difficulties for recycling. The package consists of a metal base and metal tear-off lid, plus a foil laminated cardboard sleeve and a plastic cap. This points to one of the biggest limitations for packaging design: complex packaging is too hard to separate into […]
There ought to be some sort of sliding scale for greenwashing, running from nought to ten, with ten the most honest of claims. Zero would be untruthful or disingenuous sustainability claims and ten would be the justifiable and bulletproof sustainability boasts. That is a start, but what would be good examples of either extreme? Let […]
Waste paper and board have persistent value as raw materials, so recycling them into new materials makes sense if it is done right. But waste paper and board have questionable value as a fleeting source of energy. A small cohort of people in the paper business and elsewhere have taken to disparaging recycling. They claim […]
According to Laurel Brunner of the Verdigris Project, many hundreds of thousands of books are published every year around the world. Supply chains are complicated and entrenched, but it’s essentially a local business. And yet, despite the fact that prints runs for works of fiction can be as low as 1000 copies, digital printing has […]
The industry has been blessed with two life-threatening events: digital technology gave us electronic prepress and typesetting; and the internet wiped out whole sectors of publishing and production. Both events forced many businesses to the wall, albeit for different reasons, but the net result has been positive. We have seen huge innovations in production software […]
According to Laurel Brunner, writing for the Verdigris Project, technological advances in the last few decades have been nothing short of astonishing, and there is also far less waste and far less energy required to produce print. Page layout, line art, typography, photo retouching and imaging – all of it has been subsumed into generic […]
