The Verdigris Blog by Laurel Brunner

This article was produced by the Verdigris project, an industry initiative intended to raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. This weekly commentary helps printing companies keep up to date with environmental standards, and how environmentally friendly business management can help improve their bottom lines. Verdigris is supported by the following companies: Agfa Graphics, EFI, Fespa, Fujifilm, HP, Kodak, Miraclon, Ricoh, Spindrift, Splash PR, Unity Publishing and Xeikon.

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VITO

Mon, 23/04/2012 - 11:21

The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner

Agfa Graphics has been working with an independent Flemish institute to find out more about print’s environmental impact, with some interesting results. VITO specialises in research into energy, environment and materials, and has been around for some thirty years. VITO has done a carbon footprint analysis of several of Agfa’s plate technologies, however its conclusions are relevant for all plate technologies.

According to VITO’s research, plate manufacturing and prepress activities can account for some 20% of the total Product Carbon Footprint of a printing plate, with the balance in raw material extraction and processing. Obviously the most recent printing plate technologies have the lowest impact, since they have generally been designed with efficiency and environmental friendliness in mind. The VITO report notes that there is a clear convergence in the industry between economic and ecological benefits of technologies use for print media production.

Read more about VITO

Welcome

Mon, 16/04/2012 - 14:58

The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner

Welcome to our weekly Verdigris blog. This is the first of our blogs about what is going on with the Verdigris project, dealing with matters environmental for the printing industry.

As we slide into the last few weeks of the pre drupa madness however, we are all being hit with waves of technology news that threaten to overwhelm the environmental initiatives happening at the show. There will be several worthy efforts to engage printers and their customers with a green agenda, ranging from the rather posh event hosted by the World Print & Communication Forum which costs €175 for a session running 09:00 to 15:00 on the 10th May. The €175 is to cover the cost of lunch and expenses, as this is a nonprofit event. Possibly matters green could get superceded by matters spargel and Riesling!