Intergraf creates roadmap for reduced carbon future

The European print associations’ organisation has created a roadmap to show what printers need to do to reduce the carbon footprint of their work.

Intergraf has published a roadmap to help printers identify and reduce carbon emissions. This has three steps, first calculate the C0₂, next reduce the CO₂ emissions and finally to compensate for those.

The process will help printers identify the products and processes that are responsible for 95% of emissions in print companies across 13 parameters.

“Reducing carbon emissions will be among the requirements of the upcoming European Regulation on eco design for sustainable products,” says general secretary of Intergraf Beatrice Klose. 

“The demand for the reduction of the carbon footprint of products will increase. The printing industry is now not only equipped with a credible approach to assess the carbon footprint of its products, but it also provides the market with a procedure to prioritise the reduction over the compensation of carbon emissions of its products.”

The roadmap is based on the 13 parameters that combine to produce a carbon impact assessment for printers. This was first launched in 2013, but without any guidance of how to begin let alone complete the journey.

Internal factors, that fall within Scope 1 and Scope 2, have minimal impact for printers. This accounts for 10-20% of the overall carbon impact of a finished printed product. It is the Scope 3 factors, the emissions created in production of the consumables that printers use which carry the bulk of the impact. And the most important of these is the substrate.

In a worked example, Intergraf reckons that paper is responsible for 61% or the carbon footprint of a heatset web commercial printer. Next comes the energy expended in making paper, plates, inks, varnishes and other consumables, then onsite energy use and transportation.

The calculation of these impacts is crucial for printers to cut the carbon in the products they deliver, and therefore have to spend less on payments to offsetting schemes. That, says Intergraf, is the only way to encourage printers to use less energy. The roadmap is intended to to achieve a reduced CO₂ footprint for printed products and to provide accurate figures to reduce the amount printers need to pay to offset any remaining emissions.

Intergraf has worked with two organisations on a carbon calculator for the process, Klimatinitiative which operates in Germany and ClimateCalc for the remainder of Europe.