Tom Maskill, sales and marketing director of Webmart, has been named winner of Intergraf’s Young Talent Award for 2022, having last year been runner up in the same competition.
Part of his prize will be to address the Print Matters for Future conference in Stockholm on 20 May. Maskill will speak in the morning while after lunch, Simon Biltcliffe, potentially mayor of South Yorkshire and definitely founder of Webmart, will also be speaking.
Maskill earned his spot by delivering the best paper answering questions on print’s place in the circular economy and then describing print’s role in a sustainable future. In it he called for common standards to apply to some of the language used around sustainability. For example, he explains how in Scandinavia the phrase carbon positive is taken to mean offsetting just 10% more than the measured carbon footprint for greenhouse gas emissions. For Webmart and the Enviromail product that Maskill introduced, carbon positive means offsetting twice the measured carbon footprint.
“When you have that data, you can mitigate it through format, engineering and processes,” he says. In his paper Maskill says that consideration for recyclability and reuse at design phase can slash the impact of a printed product, by as much as 80%. “Likewise carbon neutral will mean offsetting Scope 1 and Scope 2 impacts, not Scope 3 where the bigger figures will be,” he says.
A standard accepted description would allow people to make like for like comparisons and to design in the recovery and recyclability of a printed production from the start. “The sign can affect 80% of the impact of printed product,” he says in the submission. Maskill also points out that the life of a piece of print can be extended through a linkage between print and internet. An example might be a QR code in a catalogue taking the customer to a catalogue page with the latest special offers.
“Overall the print industry is moving in the right direction to become a fully circular operation. I belief we must establish common standards for calculating and reporting on the environmental impact of print. We must also educate our customers and the public on the true impact on the environment compared with other communication methods.”
At the conference in Sweden, Maskill will answer How does the next generation see the environmental performance of print? Later Biltcliffe’s presentation will be the strategic evolution of print management.
