This toxic printing industry – Andy McCourt's commentary

Printing in all its forms has an image problem. The majority of people think it is environmentally destructive to forests, polluting from both chemical and visual perspectives, arrogant in its disregard for people wishing to be free of junk mail, out-dated technically and an unattractive career prospect for young people. None of this need be true, says Andy McCourt, but the industry as a whole does little to change this perception.

In Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth presentation, he shows a slide featuring a set of scales with planet Earth on one side and gold bars on the other. 'One argument,' he says 'against environmental good-practice is that it costs too much.'

With the whole planet on one side of the scales, and solid gold weighing it down on the other, his ironic point is clearly made and he says no more than a 'Hmmmmm …'

We all have to do our bit for the environment and, now that Australia has signed the Kyoto Protocol, we have no choice. But disinformation abounds and society is still woefully ill-informed on the realities surrounding global warming, destruction of habitats, pollution and indeed printing's role in all of this. There is no small amount of hypocrisy either, as Chardonnay-sipping weekend environmentalists bemoan the excesses of others whilst driving 4WD gas-guzzlers thousands of kilometres into the bush 'for a look' and leave their cable-modem connected computers 'always on' at home and office.

Perception is everything
Perception is more powerful than reality and, right or wrong, our industry stinks ... literally. The cleaner members of the printing industry are still relative voices in the wilderness and deserve medals for getting as far as they have in becoming non-polluting and carbon-neutral.

The photo accompanying this article was taken on a regular Sydney day when the truck bearing the message: "Is your property signboard printed with toxic solvent inks? Ours are not!" ambled along on its business of installing real-estate boards. Extend this theme to the industry at large and there is the root of problem - we are considered toxic, so much so that even one of our own members has seen fit to bring this to the public's attention. How many solvent printers are still using the 'toxic' version?

To aggressively address the misconceptions and take a stand that is both environmentally and commercially sound. In the offset world, Finsbury Green and Focus Press sprint to mind.

The perception of toxicity starts at the pulp mill end. They do pong, and use enormous quantities of water. Modern design and engineering minimises the smell and effluent, but the world is replete with cases of pulp mills poisoning fresh water - including the recent calls to move the Baikal pulpmill in Russia away from the shores of the world's largest freshwater lake (it holds 20% of the planet's freshwater) - Lake Baikal in Siberia. Closer to home, the controversy surrounding the proposed Tamar Valley, Tasmania pulpmill is far from over despite being given the green light (pun intended) by the new Rudd Government. Work needs to be done on the forest-to-pulp issue.

To address the misconceptions in the opening paragraph:
Paper - need not be from fibre sourced from non-renewable resources. FSC and the major Western paper suppliers themselves have addressed this and most virgin fibre comes from managed plantations and recycled feedstock. On average, the printing and packaging industry in Australia and New Zealand uses 57% recycled fibre and 43% virgin fibre. The figure for fibre packaging is more like 90% recycled.

Pulp and paper production is not the main user of timber. 55% of all wood harvested is burned for fuel!  Of the remainder, around 33% might be used for pulp and paper production but the figure is much lower when sawmill waste and forest tailings are taken into consideration. 50-60% of wood entering a sawmill ends up as residue (shavings, slabs, chips, sawdust), and can be used for other purposes - including pulp production. Use of recycled fibre is on the increase.

The major global downside to paper is the illegal logging and fraudulent use of FSC by mostly Asian producers. Whilst Australia can prohibit plain printing/writing paper sourced from threatened forested areas from being imported – it recklessly ignores printed finished product that may contain illegally sourced fibre from places such as the Russian Taiga where armed logging gangs roam free, or from Kalimantan where the clear-felling is nothing short of criminal.

Paper is a beautiful, versatile and strategic material, ingrained in human culture and development as much as the wheel. Its manufacture in parts of the world needs to be looked into but it can be portrayed as a hundred times more eco-friendly than plastics and metals when the FSC chain of custody model is adhered to and managed plantation trees are the feedstock.

Chemical pollution: there is no reason in 2008 why any printer should still be releasing toxic chemicals into either the water system or the atmosphere. Many still do, but they won't be doing this for much longer. The WDA Enviro-signs people have caught onto this and turned it to their advantage. You can do it too.

Visual pollution: Litter – everyone hates it and the time will come when, if copies of the Herald are blowing along Pitt Street, Fairfax (used only as an illustration here) will be made to pay for the clean-up. Junk mail must be addressed and direct mail will become 100% targeted, opted-in, smarter, in shorter runs and will deliver response rates in the 50 and 60 per cents instead of 3-5%, with 95-97% wasted.

Technically outdated: Nothing could be further from the truth and yet the perception 'out there' is still of a dirty, old industry, mostly male dominated and with equipment that has seen little change in 100 years. Those of us IN the industry know this is untrue but Joe and Jane Public remain to be convinced.

Poor career prospects: All younger people I speak with in the industry, think it's great, especially if they are working with state-of-the-art technology. What other industry can offer a learning curve that encompasses IT, Internet commerce, web (www.) development, multi-media, telecommunications, mechanical engineering, precision instrumentation, colour theory and practice, diverse creativity and the oldest known method of recording human knowledge? But we undersell the benefits by projecting an outmoded image.

If we all succeed in removing toxicity from our industry – both literally and perceptively – printing can confidently march forward; changed but changed for the better.