News
Issue No. 8 - December/ 2002/january
News Snapshots
Move to Green Printing
Finsbury, one of South Australia’s largest printing companies, has been taken by surprise by the success of its Green Printing program, which has rapidly become an exercise in branding after starting as a notion at the beginning of this year.
“Ours was the first environmental printing brand in the country. By using it, customers are trying to communicate to their own end-users that they’re trying as well,”says Finsbury’s Technical Manager, Rodney Wade.
Government and cultural organisations have made the early running with Green Printing, but business is rapidly taking it up: “In the US and Europe across a lot of industry this is a big deal,” Rodney says.
Finsbury earned the ISO14001 Environmental Management accreditation in February and the discipline has lowered costs as well as waste emission. Two years ago, Finsbury sent almost all of its paper, cardboard, timber waste and plastic to landfill. Now, 90% of this waste is recycled. Film is disappearing from Finsbury’s pre-press process as computer to plate technology matures, removing that material and the associated chemicals from the waste stream. Inks have changed to vegetable-based types that are biodegradable and require no solvents and the company has signed up for the Greenhouse Challenge to reduce VOC gas emissions.
“Really, meeting 14001 is not enough; we try to do more,” Rodney says, noting that it in a low-risk area like printing, accreditation is not onerous.
“We talk to our suppliers to reduce the amount of packaging that comes into the building,” Rodney says. “We are working to minimise energy usage, which can involve the simple things like having everyone turn their monitors off at the end of the day.”
MGF comes home from Sydney
After nine years in Sydney, Max Franchitto has come home to Adelaide, bringing with him his firm, MGF C...
