Letters, feedback, get it off your chest: 22 May 2008
Andy McCourt’s commentaries once again get the readers writing. Why not join in the debate or comment on some of our other stories.
Re: This toxic printing industry - Andy McCourt's commentary
You don't need to be told how much I and the other members of APIA support the views of this article. But given the campaign that APIA is trying to get up on precisely this point, with articles in your magazine already, not to mention the inserts. I would have thought that the campaign and the need for everyone to get behind and support it was worth a very big mention.
APIA is the only organization trying to garner the industry together to fight back and yet we get silence. Finsbury and Focus Press get a mention for their individual efforts but our first brochure has gone to at least 50,000 people so far. I venture to suggest that that is far more than those two organizations together. A few printers have even printed it themselves to distribute to their customer base.
Guys can we all work concertedly together on this. We need to get everyone off their backsides on a national level to join the campaign and that means their time and money. It's in all our vested interests to do so.
Please think of the campaign next time there is an article in this vein.
Bernard Cassell
Managing Director
CPI Group
Your article is an attempt to put us in the real world, but I have found that ink and chemical suppliers cannot tell me how many carbon credits I need to become carbon neutral on the press consumables ie per kg of ink and per litre of their range of on press chemicals. Your reference to toxic ink ?
Yes we know this and avoid eating the range we have but which inks are you talking about ? None of the ink suppliers are going to tell us which inks are more toxic than others; or are they? Are there any recyclers that collect used ink tins ? How many printers have solvent recovery units for ink solvent , press solvents and alcohol ? How many businesses have specialized pick ups of used fluro tubes ? The list goes on.
Why can't the industry as a whole set some parameters, so self-grading, of how carbon sensitive each print business is with goals from 1 to 10, so over time we are able to become carbon neutral.
Calvin Wilkie
Re: See the sea in shifting surfer stamp
It's taken 14 months for Print21 to pick up the story of Australia Post's motion stamp; which was released in March 2007. That's hardly news. Not only that - the article omits the salient points that constitute the real story.
Outer Aspect was a technology partner - and an excellent one - but hardly the leader of the project as inferred by the article. SEP developed the market, created the sale, developed the product and processes to make it a reality, then produced it, invoiced the client and got paid.
To dismissively describe the "conversion to a postage stamp" as if it was a minor part of the project is really letting the tail of this story wag the dog. It exaggerates OA's role, and ignores the world-leading skill of SEP's people. (Incidentally, talking so freely about the manufacture of a currency substitute demonstrates a failure to understand the security ethos of a stamp producer.)
Australia Post was the third buyer of SEP's motion stamps. Dutch Post and Irish Post preceded them, and Finland's post followed with a beautiful sheetlet released to acclaim in January this year.
The Dutch stamp won SEP the Agfa Award for the most creative use of an image in 2006. The Australian stamp did so again in 2007 - the only time a printer has won it twice in a row. When accepting the award I recognised and thanked Outer Aspect for their input. They were an excellent technology partner who made the project possible, but it was SEP's people who made it happen.
It's hard enough to see SEP close its doors. Re-writing its history and ignoring the great things it achieved is an insult to the excellent people who achieved so much.
Mark Reid