This is a year when sustainability will be top of the agenda and as if to prove that, along comes Royal Mail with a set of requirements for print to count as sustainable. This is not the print that it buys (though no doubt the criteria applies there too), but the print that it carries every day. It may have trouble policing these requirements, but that is not the point. Royal Mail wants to make its business sustainable and what it does and how it does it, is part of that process. And that has an impact on others.
This is the law of unintended consequences. Printers are used to answering questions about their own sustainability ethos from customers and can generally satisfy them that the paper is correctly sourced, inks use vegetable rather than mineral oils and what little waste is created is properly disposed of. Few printers have had yet to bother about how what they produce is recycled. Indeed many will point out that as with libel, the printer is merely carrying out the customer’s wishes, has little control over what is printed and so is not liable.
Up to a point. Printers need to engage in conversations about sustainability with their clients. It is essential that they do so, because the digital competition is certainly not going to extol the sustainability credentials of print. Many printers are already working in this way and have the data to help customers make better informed decisions and can provide advice where it is needed. Those that can’t and don’t will find themselves exposed when somewhere down the line the sustainability of print becomes part of the discussion. These are decisions outside the direct control of the printer – at the point of purchase of a book perhaps, but they are also questions that the printer can help anticipate. Sustainability is no longer a questions about If. It is about When.
Unintended consequences to the big question
This is a year when sustainability will be top of the agenda and as if to prove that, along comes Royal Mail with a set of requirements for print to count as sustainable. This is not the print that it buys (though no doubt the criteria applies there too), but the print that it carries every day. It may have trouble policing these requirements, but that is not the point. Royal Mail wants to make its business sustainable and what it does and how it does it, is part of that process. And that has an impact on others.
This is the law of unintended consequences. Printers are used to answering questions about their own sustainability ethos from customers and can generally satisfy them that the paper is correctly sourced, inks use vegetable rather than mineral oils and what little waste is created is properly disposed of. Few printers have had yet to bother about how what they produce is recycled. Indeed many will point out that as with libel, the printer is merely carrying out the customer’s wishes, has little control over what is printed and so is not liable.
Up to a point. Printers need to engage in conversations about sustainability with their clients. It is essential that they do so, because the digital competition is certainly not going to extol the sustainability credentials of print. Many printers are already working in this way and have the data to help customers make better informed decisions and can provide advice where it is needed. Those that can’t and don’t will find themselves exposed when somewhere down the line the sustainability of print becomes part of the discussion. These are decisions outside the direct control of the printer – at the point of purchase of a book perhaps, but they are also questions that the printer can help anticipate. Sustainability is no longer a questions about If. It is about When.
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