Focus Press strips waste from its production

22 September 2005

He points to the effects of good waste stream management on the bottom line of his company where the manufacturing operations have now made savings in waste disposal costs of over $50,000 over the past four years.

In a clear demonstration of the success of world’s best practice combining QA and environmental management, the Sydney printer has managed further significant environmental performance improvements during the last financial year demonstrating that cleaner production systems do work.

Results Summery, 2004 – 2005 Financial Year

  • Water Use: Target improvement – 20 per cent; actual – 61 per cent.

    Reduction in water use shows an 84 per cent improvement against the company's benchmark year. Just as pleasing to Fuller is that this also represents a further improvement over last year’s record result or 61 per cent reduction against the previous year.

    “Our water reduction plan worked well this year and again we were able to make further significant savings by being smart about how we operate. Getting such significant savings again in the future will be a challenge, but one we’ll not take lightly” remarked David D’Astoli, prepress manager and water saving guru at Focus.


  • Landfill Waste: Target improvement – 20 per cent; actual – 68 per cent.

    “Another pleasing result this year shows our landfill waste volumes are continuing to reduce significantly,” said David Fuller. “We place a high value on reducing this form of waste. Savings this last financial year are represented by a decrease of 91 per cent compared with our benchmark year. This also represents a reduction of 68 per cent compared with the previous (2004) financial year which was a record year itself!


  • Rag Purchases: Target improvement – 20 per cent; actual – 89 per cent.

    With the introduction of laundering lightly soiled rags for re-use, we have seen huge dollar savings in rag purchases. This represents a saving of 94 per cent against benchmark year (2001) and a 89 per cent improvement against last year.