Sustainable Publishing

PUBLISHING

Sustainability is defined as allowing for the needs of all people to be met without

preventing those same

needs from being met by future generations

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• It’s energy intensive – The pulp and paper industry is the world’s fifth largest industrial consumer of energy, according to Worldwatch Institute. However, some producers use the by-products of the pulp production process as bio-fuel, virtually eliminating their carbon dioxide emissions.• It uses huge amounts of water – but less if recycled within the factory.• It generates large amounts of pollutants and waste whilst waste treatment, especially in European mills, has improved in recent years, many mills still release a variety of pollutants into the surrounding air and water.

Impacts of paper making

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Some of these are greenhouse gases that contribute to global climate change. Others can affect the more immediate surroundings that local people and wildlife rely on and contribute to air pollution, acid rain and the degradation of freshwater and marine ecosystems.

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Tips for choosing paper

Different papers are produced in different ways so it’s difficult to generalise about the environmental impact of paper. However, here are some of the things

to look out for below;

• POST-CONSUMER WASTEChoose the highest percentage possible, although any percentage of either post- or pre-consumer waste is

better than none.

• OFF-WHITE OR NATURAL WHITE PAPERUnbleached recycled paper undergoes fewer processes than other recycled or virgin fibre, and therefore

uses fewer chemicals and less energy.

FSC CERTIFIED PAPER

Stick to FSC certified materials if you’re buying virgin paper. Although not 100% watertight, this is widely agreed to be the best certification scheme

available. Treat anything else that claims to be from sustainable forestry with caution (read more). See

box (right) for the three types of FSC certification.

Please note:Under the FSC Mixed Sources scheme, the virgin fibre content of a paper must contain a minimum of 50% FSC

certified fibre while the remainder of the virgin content must come from ‘controlled sources’.

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• It uses less energy and creates fewer emissions than virgin paper

• The process of felling trees, transporting them for processing, the pulping and manufacturing processes, and the distribution of the resulting paper uses a large amount of energy – mostly from fossil fuels. Recycled paper requires only a fraction of this processing, using between 28 and 70% less energy.

• It supports UK recycling companies and provides a market for UK paper waste

• It reduces the amount of waste paper going to landfill

• In the UK it is predicted that we will run out of landfill sites during the next decade. Landfills will be replaced by incinerators whose toxic fall-out has been proven to be harmful to human health. In addition, as paper biodegrades it produces the greenhouse gas, methane.

Using recycled paper is the only way to be sure that your paper hasn’t had a detrimental effect on any forest environment. Only a small (although increasing) amount of the virgin fibre used in the UK is from truly well managed forests. To be absolutely sure that your paper has not had a detrimental effect on any forest environment, use 100 per cent recycled paper.

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Why use recycled paper?

Recycled paper is the greenest option overall – it uses up waste paper and its production requires less

energy and fewer chemicals.

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Print Spec Tips

• Does your project need to be this size or can it be smaller? A reduced format could save paper, ink, water, carbon emissions in distribution and it may even save money on postage.

• Can you use lighter paper for your job? Avoid specifying heavier paper than is necessary. It may seem obvious, but 200gsm paper uses double the amount of wood fibre as 100gsm paper.

• Talk to your printer to check paper size availability and press size before designing your product. Many materials are available in a limited range of sizes and so simply shaving off a few millimetres may dramatically reduce waste.

• The most waste and cost-effective formats are A sizes, as all materials and printing presses are based around these.

• If your product is likely to be around for some time, design it to be updateable.

• Don’t print more copies than you need just because it’s not going to cost much more.

• Make sure that the job has been proofed extremely carefully. This reduces the risk of a re-print or a job being pulled off the press halfway through.

• Keeping ink coverage to a minimum reduces the amount of environmentally damaging ink used and makes your product easier to recycle.

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“Design should not simply exist to visually communicate; it should also be used to re-nourish the planet”

Info used from lovelyasatree.comDesigned by Gabrielle Smeets