SaxoPrint highlights how environmentally-friendly printing products and affordability for charities need not be mutually exclusive.
Charities need to print a lot, from flyers and postcards to business cards, stationery and charity guides. That means a lot of paper. With all of these printing needs, staying environmentally-friendly can be difficult. But it doesn’t have to be, there are ways to provide planet protection with paper.
As a charitable organisation, you probably want to keep your carbon footprint as small as possible. A carefully selected online printing service, for instance, can make a huge difference on your contribution to a more sustainable tomorrow. Allowing you to care for the planet while you are caring for others.
The printing industry can have a high impact on the environment, but there are ways to remain carbon neutral without breaking your budget. Environmentally-friendly print products and affordability are not contradictions.
Some online printing services even have commitments to keeping their impact as low as possible without affecting price. In fact, online printing companies have the advantage of printing in bulk, allowing them to optimise their methods to eliminate unnecessary waste. They are also able to more easily save resources, which helps them to better protect the environment.
Planet Protection with… Paper?
The main material for the print industry is paper, so the first step in reducing your effect on the environment is to find a printing service that offers recycled or natural paper.
Recycled paper consists of 100% reused paper, this means no additional trees were chopped down. In addition to wood, other natural resources are conserved in the process of producing recycled paper. More than 70% of the energy and water can be saved in the process of making recycled paper.
In short: recycled paper significantly protects the environment. To take it one step further, check to see if your printing service is an environmentally-friendly certified printer through outside partners like the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council), ClimatePartner or Total Zero.
Email’s Carbon Footprint
It may surprise you, but sending mass emails leaves a massive mark on the environment. According to Mike Berners-Lee, a leading expert in carbon emissions, the internet is responsible for 300 metric tonnes of CO2 per year—the equivalent of every UK citizen flying round trip to America twice. Specifically, email takes up a large percentage of those carbon emissions.
A year’s worth of emails for an average business person corresponds to driving 200 miles. According to a study done by the computer security software company, McAfee, 78% of all incoming emails are mass emails, which requires 33bn kilowatt hours. 80% of this electricity is spent reading, deleting and searching through the spam for valid emails.
Furthermore, valid emails have a much larger carbon footprint than spam, as the user spends more time actually reading and interacting with the email. You, of course, hope that your mass emails and newsletters are read by potential donors and are not immediately deleted. Something else to consider is: there is no carbon cost for sharing a printed item.
A charity brochure or postcard can be physically passed around an office or among friends with no additional carbon emissions. The McAffee study shows us that emails cannot be shared without adding to your carbon footprint.
In short, the carbon footprint of a two-page letter is close to the equivalent of sending an email. A one page letter or postcard has the potential to be even less. Furthermore, by choosing an online printing service that offers climate neutral or carbon offset printing you can significantly avoid damage to the environment.
Together with a responsible printing service, you can save time, save money and save the planet.
Sara Trumpp is junior content manager at SaxoPrint.
Civil Society News would like to thank SaxoPrint for this blog.
