It’s been clear for many years now that processless printing plates are the way forward to improve sustainability in the printing business. They are increasingly the preferred option for printing companies keen to cut their carbon footprints, as well as saving time and money. Kodak recently presented some compelling data to encourage more European customers to switch to process free plates, specifically to the Kodak Sonora Xtra plate. This plate is made in Germany at the company’s Osterode factory. Printing plates have been made here since 1962 for customers throughout the European continent.

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Much of the graphics industry generally responds to environmental anxieties with a collective yawn, even though there are plenty of reasons why we should be paying attention. At the very least climate change is a collective responsibility. Awareness of print’s sustainability is another sound reason, as is being equipped to answer questions from inquisitive clients.

They might be interested to know that the COP24 has collectively developed a rule book to help participating entities put the 2015 Paris Agreement into practise. Countries will be approaching the problem using the same rules. As has been widely publicised the Paris agreement is to keep the planet’s overall temperature rise to within 1.5º Centigrade and no more than 2º Centigrade. The rule book is a tool taking this commitment from abstraction to action and reality. 2800 points of contention were outlined in presummit drafts of the rule book, and were mostly resolved. This is an astonishing testament to the earnest dedication of the parties involved in developing the rule book.

It was also confirmed that rich countries are to pay for poor countries’ efforts to curb their emissions and adapt to the effects of climate change. Significantly China accepted common rules for country emissions, leading the way and encouraging other developing countries to also accept them. They also agreed that failing to comply with the rules would mean that countries have to explain why, and outline how they plan to ensure compliance in the future. This is a big step forward and ensures a common approach and an environment for sharing best practises.

We should all be impressed with this progress. Balancing the interests of 200 participants with wildly divergent experiences of climate change aspects and impacts is huge. Now we have a starting point and a framework from which to grow and build for future climate change mitigation efforts.

There is still much to be done however. For instance little progress was make on carbon trading, which remains hobbled and uncoordinated across different geographies. However carbon trading exchanges are vital in the fight to avoid the 3º Centigrade increase in global temperatures we are currently on track for. We haven’t even begin to address the issue of decarbonising economies.

What should the graphics business do about all this? Nothing more than it is already doing, isn’t an option. We must all continue working to raise awareness of environmental aspects and impacts of the graphics industry, and keep driving improvements in production investments, technologies and tools to facilitate and make accountable print’s recycling.

– Laurel Brunner

This article was produced by the Verdigris Project, an industry initiative intended to raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. This weekly commentary helps printing companies keep up to date with environmental standards, and how environmentally friendly business management can help improve their bottom lines. Verdigris is supported by the following companies: Agfa Graphics, EFI, Fespa, HP, Kodak, Kornit, Ricoh, Spindrift, Splash PR, Unity Publishing and Xeikon.

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In common with most of the paper industry, Scheufelen Paper has seen its traditional business decline, so a couple of years ago it started developing grass based papers. The company recently attracted further investment to develop its ideas and products from the Green Growth Fund 2 (GGF2). The GGF2 targets energy and resource-efficient companies in the European Union and supports them to grow globally. GGF2’s investment into Scheufelen allows the company to scale up development and production of grasspaper products in the hope of seriously disrupting the paper industry.

Scheufelen claims that manufacture of this new substrate consumes less than half the resources of processes using chemical cellulose sourced from wood. This is because the raw material, sundried grass, used in grass papers is sourced close to its point of manufacture and because production requires 50 per cent less energy and chemicals. It also saves 6000 litres of water per tonne compared to alternative processes, and collapses supply chains taking out the emissions associated with transport. Scheufelen’s product is based on fresh fibre pulp and turning it into paper requires far less water and energy. The company says it uses less than a litre of water per tonne and 4.8 fewer tonnes of carbon dioxide to manufacture grasspaper and that it requires no processing chemicals.

Scheufelen’s grasspaper can be used for office papers and books, but perhaps more interesting is that it can also work for packaging. This industry is worth many billions and these new grass based papers can apparently be used instead of petro-chemical based plastics. Scheufelen expect to develop products suitable for corrugated and folding box food packaging applications, and as grasspaper has ‘bio-based water and fat barriers’, the company expects it to replace food pouches, trays, cups, foils, and cards made from plastic. Scheufelen board member Andreas Rohardt has 30 years experience in the wood, pulp and paper industry and says that ‘just as people switched from fresh-fiber white paper to recycled paper en masse in the past, we expect people to shift now from plastic and recycled paper bags, trays, packaging foils with their negative health effects to grasspaper, which is cost-competitive with a smaller environmental footprint and [carries] less health risks.’

The increase in funding will be used to scale up grasspaper production to significant monthly volumes, primarily for food and retail applications. And grasspaper can be readily recycled and composted. If this is all true and everything goes to plan, Scheufelen’s grasspaper could indeed seriously disrupt the paper industry.

– Laurel Brunner

This article was produced by the Verdigris Project, an industry initiative intended to raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. This weekly commentary helps printing companies keep up to date with environmental standards, and how environmentally friendly business management can help improve their bottom lines. Verdigris is supported by the following companies: Agfa Graphics, EFI, Fespa, HP, Kodak, Kornit, Ricoh, Spindrift, Splash PR, Unity Publishing and Xeikon.

The post The Verdigris blog: Paper made from grass appeared first on Digital Printer.

Much of the problem would be solved if data centres were cooled using renewable energy. Google has taken a lead with renewables and in 2017 announced that it was purchasing as much renewable energy as possible, however it still needs to plug into the grid. Google might fancy a chat with Windcloud 4.0, founded in Germany earlier this year and which describes itself as a “regenerative cloudhoster”.

Windcloud 4.0’s energy comes from locally generated wind power and a large photovoltaic park. Energy is stored in megawatt batteries and the whole set up is designed for redundant energy security. Internet connection is two parallel fibre optic lines running at 2TBits per second.

The world’s digital infrastructure is growing every second and is predicted to consume 20% of the world’s electricity production by 2030. At this rate the urgency of moving data centres to renewables can hardly be overstated if the planet is to be saved from being fricaséed by then. So this initiative by Windcloud 4.0’s founders and partners from the energy industry and local government is to be welcomed. The initiative fulfils key requirements for a data centre that, apart from being carbon neutral, should be readily extendable. It should also be fully certified so that external third party auditors confirm its carbon neutrality. Windcloud 4.0 is certified to ISO 27001 for data security and EN 50600 for its infrastructure and buildings.

Germany generates masses of windpower along its northern coast and last year much of what was produced was not used, mainly because there was no suitable means of storing and delivering it. Windcloud 4.0’s business is based on using a controlled model to manage renewable energy distribution and storage to support data hosting and cloud services within a protected network.

This young company offers all industries, including graphics, with a sustainable alternative to conventional cloud hosting. It’s worth a closer look not just by Google, but also by suppliers and manufacturers offering cloud services to printers and publishers.

• Laurel Brunner

This article was produced by the Verdigris Project, an industry initiative intended to raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. This weekly commentary helps printing companies keep up to date with environmental standards, and how environmentally friendly business management can help improve their bottom lines. Verdigris is supported by the following companies: Agfa Graphics, EFI, Fespa, HP, Kodak, Kornit, Ricoh, Spindrift, Splash PR, Unity Publishing and Xeikon.

The post The Verdigris blog: The carbon footprint of data centres appeared first on Digital Printer.

The Dutch government has two mutually compatible schemes underway to do precisely that. Under the MIA scheme, environmentally friendly investments qualify for an additional tax deduction of up to 36% of the investment cost. Under the Vamil scheme business owners can decide for themselves how and when to depreciate capital equipment, up to 75%, with the rest amortised following the usual rules. The idea is to encourage entrepreneurs to bring environmentally friendly products quickly to market and to get businesses to invest in environmentally friendly kit. The two programmes are managed by the Dutch Enterprise Agency and have a budget totalling over €100 million.

There are certain conditions that the proposed investment have to meet in order for business owners to qualify for the tax breaks. According to the Dutch government’s website to count an investment must “provide an obvious environmental benefit; be innovative or must still have a small market share in relation to the alternative; and be more expensive than the environmentally unfriendly alternative. ” Digital printing technologies answer a resounding YES to all of these requirements.

And the graphics industry has its first manufacturer with a digital press that qualifies for the MIA/Vimal programme. Fujifilm has announced that the JetPress 720s B2 inkjet digital colour press complies with the scheme’s requirements. The JetPress’s water based inks are deinkable under the same conditions as offset printed prints. Furthermore the JetPress does not use any applied primer that has substances that might be of environmental concern, another stipulation of the MIA/Vimal programme. The press includes Fujifilm’s Rapid Coagulation Primer system, which lays down a very thin ink film to encourage the coagulation of ink droplets. The coagulation layer’s chemistry also helps to make the ink easy to remove under the right conditions in deinking and recycling processes.

Tax incentives are an increasingly common means to encourage sustainable investment. Fujifilm is to be commended for its efforts to ensure that the JetPress conforms to the Dutch government’s requirements. It would be great if we could see more policies of this kind and more digital press manufacturers following the Fujifilm lead.

– Laurel Brunner

This article was produced by the Verdigris Project, an industry initiative intended to raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. This weekly commentary helps printing companies keep up to date with environmental standards, and how environmentally friendly business management can help improve their bottom lines. Verdigris is supported by the following companies: Agfa Graphics, EFI, Fespa, HP, Kodak, Kornit, Ricoh, Spindrift, Splash PR, Unity Publishing and Xeikon.

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It’s hard to get reliable data that supports this, but it’s true that plastic doesn’t weigh much so it doesn’t add a lot to transport costs and the associated emissions. It’s also durable and reliable so food waste is minimised: think loose versus plastic wrapped grapes. However it’s also true that many products sold wrapped in plastic don’t need protection: think coconuts and rutabagas (swedes). The benefits of plastic are many, but there is no getting away from the fact that it is overused and that there are alternatives that have less of a negative impact on the environment.

Paper companies such as Stora Enso and Sappi have made big strides in developing equivalent alternatives based on wood pulp, a renewable resource which also happens to offer an excellent carbon capture method. Trees not only capture carbon but they also consume it via photosynthesis, a process that also produces oxygen as a waste byproduct. Paptic has been developed by a Finnish start-up and it could replace both paper and plastic. This paper-based material is fully recyclable and is compatible with existing packaging lines. Its developers say that it’s “the next generation of paper with all the benefits of paper combined with the critical properties of plastics like heat sealability”.

In response to such initiatives and to consumer worries, much has been done within the plastic industry to improve the material’s environmental impact. Plastic is mostly made from oil, so it is not easy to recycle. But some plastics can be recycled into new plastics and the rest can be incinerated to generate energy, assuming the stuff is collected in the first place. The recyclability or otherwise of plastic depends on its composition and the complexity of polymers involved: the fewer for instance in bottles, the better. Packages made from mixed ingredients are harder to turn into raw materials for new products. 

In the UK, where households generate 1.7 million tonnes of packaging waste annually, work is being done to reduce waste plastics to their components so that these chemicals can be reused. This work is still in its early stages, and in the meantime plastic continues to pollute the oceans and waterways. 

– Laurel Brunner

This article was produced by the Verdigris project, an industry initiative intended to raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. This weekly commentary helps printing companies keep up to date with environmental standards, and how environmentally friendly business management can help improve their bottom lines. Verdigris is supported by the following companies: Agfa Graphics, EFI, Fespa, HP, Kodak, Kornit, Ricoh, Spindrift, Splash PR, Unity Publishing and Xeikon.

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