Here’s a very interesting article from the NY Times published earlier this year.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/04/04/opinion/04opchart.html 

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How Green Is My iPad?

By DANIEL GOLEMAN and GREGORY NORRIS

With e-readers like Apple’s new iPad and Amazon’s Kindle touting their vast libraries of digital titles, some bookworms are bound to wonder if tomes-on-paper will one day become quaint relics. But the question also arises, which is more environmentally friendly: an e-reader or an old-fashioned book?

To find the answer, we turned to life-cycle assessment, which evaluates the ecological impact of any product, at every stage of its existence, from the first tree cut down for paper to the day that hardcover decomposes in the dump. With this method, we can determine the greenest way to read.

(A note about e-readers: some technical details — for instance, how those special screens are manufactured — are not publicly available and these products vary in their exact composition. We’ve based our estimates on a composite derived from available information. It’s also important to keep in mind that we’re focusing on the e-reader aspect of these devices, not any other functions they may offer.)

One e-reader requires the extraction of 33 pounds of minerals. That includes trace amounts of exotic metals like columbite-tantalite, often mined in war-torn regions of Africa. But it’s mostly sand and gravel to build landfills; they hold all the waste from manufacturing wafer boards for the integrated circuits. An e-reader also requires 79 gallons of water to produce its batteries and printed wiring boards, and in refining metals like the gold used in trace quantities in the circuits.

A book made with recycled paper consumes about two-thirds of a pound of minerals. (Here again, the greatest mineral use is actually gravel, mainly for the roads used to transport materials throughout the supply chain.) And it requires just 2 gallons of water to make the pulp slurry that is then pressed and heat-dried to make paper.

Fossil Fuels The e-reader’s manufacture, along a vast supply chain of consumer electronics, is relatively energy-hungry, using 100 kilowatt hours of fossil fuels and resulting in 66 pounds of carbon dioxide. For a single book, which, recycled or not, requires energy to form and dry the sheets, it’s just two kilowatt hours, and 100 times fewer greenhouse gases.

Health The unit for comparison here is a “disability adjusted life-year,” the length of time someone loses to disability because of exposure to, say, toxic material released into the air, water and soil, anywhere along the line.

For both the book and the e-reader, the main health impacts come from particulate emissions like nitrogen and sulfur oxides, which travel deep into our lungs, worsening asthma and chronic coughing and increasing the risk of premature death. The adverse health impacts from making one e-reader are estimated to be 70 times greater than those from making a single book.

If you order a book online and have it shipped 500 miles by air, that creates roughly the same pollution and waste as making the book in the first place. Driving five miles to the bookstore and back causes about 10 times the pollution and resource depletion as producing it. You’d need to drive to a store 300 miles away to create the equivalent in toxic impacts on health of making one e-reader — but you might do that and more if you drive to the mall every time you buy a new book.

If you like to read a book in bed at night for an hour or two, the light bulb will use more energy than it takes to charge an e-reader, which has a highly energy-efficient screen. But if you read in daylight, the advantage tips to a book.

If your e-reader ends up being “recycled” illegally so that workers, including children, in developing countries dismantle it by hand, they will be exposed to a range of toxic substances. If it goes through state-of-the-art procedures — for example, high-temperature incineration with the best emissions controls and metals recovery — the “disability adjusted life-year” count will be far less for workers.

If your book ends up in a landfill, its decomposition generates double the global warming emissions and toxic impacts on local water systems as its manufacture.

Some of this math is improving. More and more books are being printed with soy-based inks, rather than petroleum-based ones, on paper that is recycled or sourced from well-managed forests and that was produced at pulp mills that don’t use poisons like chlorine to whiten it. The electronics industry, too, is trying to reduce the use of toxic chemicals, and to improve working conditions and worker safety throughout its far-flung supply chains.

So, how many volumes do you need to read on your e-reader to break even?

With respect to fossil fuels, water use and mineral consumption, the impact of one e-reader payback equals roughly 40 to 50 books. When it comes to global warming, though, it’s 100 books; with human health consequences, it’s somewhere in between.

All in all, the most ecologically virtuous way to read a book starts by walking to your local library.

Companies with footers encouraging users not to print emails are being targeted by APIA’s paper – part of every day life campaign.

According to Tim Woods of the paper – part of every day life campaign, an increasing number of industry companies, organisations and individuals are damaging their business value chains by using email footers that suggest paper-based communications should be reduced.

"Slogans at the bottom of an email like ‘think before you print’ or worse, the totally incorrect ’save trees and email this’ imply there is something wrong with using paper, especially when compared to using email,” he said.

The promotional campaign is writing separately to every company, organisation and individual using these incorrect and unhelpful email footers, seeking their assistance to help promote sustainable communications media.
"We do not want to directly criticise businesses that are part of the same value chain and who fail to support paper as a sustainable communications medium. First, we are approaching them to seek their voluntary withdrawal of these email footers," Woods said.
Woods’ advice is for companies to rethink their email footers. "We should all have email footers that say things like: ‘Print and share this email to ensure the paper industry grows more trees’," he said.

"We all support resource conservation, so we should support print on paper as the only truly sustainable communications media. We must avoid falling into the trap of assuming that because electronic communications are new, they are more sustainable. That just is not true.”

Have you read the email footer from a CQ email recently? Take a closer look at the green text along the bottom. We’ve been saying this for quite some time Click on the picture below to have a look.

So what is latex printing? …

• a new large format digital print technology
• designed to produce high quality permanent outdoor & indoor applications
• using water-based latex inks with the environment in mind.

New applications for this printer include event banners, bus shelters, vehicle wraps, POS Posters, Exhibition Graphics, window graphics, lightboxes and Wallpaper!

Yes, you heard us… Wallpaper!

Here’s another idea - Garage Doors!

How do you like these garage door graphics?  We just need a crazy design and we can print these on our new latex printer so let your imagination go wild, get creative and can try something new.

These images are printed and attached to the outside of  garage doors so it looks as though the doors are open with something random inside.

Latex printing is also featured on the Green Poster page on our CQ Green website!

Did you know that when 1 tree is cut down, 3 more are planted?

There aren’t many industries around that can aspire to becoming genuinely sustainable.  The paper industry, however is one of them, and this website shows not only how this is being done, but how you can apply many of these practices to your business as well.

There are plenty of ideas and downloadable resources as well as the opportunity to contact CQ for some free environmental training for you and your staff.

There’s a lot said about paper and how it affects our environment.

But did you know that the paper industry is one of those working hardest to preserve our precious natural resources?

Find out the facts at  Positive About Paper

As a footnote, CQ have also begun to focus on removing chemicals from the printing process where ever possible, replacing them with water based solvent free large format solutions, as well as soy and vegetable-based compounds for toner and paper dyes.

If your company would like to know more, call us for a free environmental morning tea shout. We’ll provide the food and let your staff know about the latest developments in environmental print and paper resources.

Use of Paper

• According to new research, digital media is no substitute for traditional printed media.
• Most adults reported that they feel more comfortable when they have something on paper than when it’s on screen, suggesting that we make an instinctive association between things we can touch and feel and things that are ‘real’.
• Nearly two out of three (64 percent) workers prefer ink on paper to a computer screen when it comes to reading.
• You can exchange a dozen emails in the time it takes to find a stamp for your snail mail, but a handwritten birthday card in your mailbox somehow means more than an identically worded email in your inbox.

Environmental

• Two in three U.S. adults (67 percent) agree that they care more about saving money than "being green".
• BUT only 11 percent of employed adults report that their company is less likely to choose "green" products if it means spending more money.
• For many small businesses, outsourced printing is a cost-efficient way to be green.

Outsourcing Print

• In addition to investing in print hardware that rarely operates at capacity, otherwise cost-conscious businesses regularly find themselves paying more than they have to for ink, paper, and other consumables
• The cost of maintaining extensive in-house print capacity is compounded by gratuitous usage.
• Because printing out-of-house bears a more obvious – albeit lower – cost, it is rare to find people using a print shop unnecessarily.

The full article can be read here http://members.whattheythink.com/news/index.cfm?id=40687

Ecofont has been designed to save printer ink using a very obvious observation which centers around the idea that a font with less visible areas requires less ink. Ecofont therefore is a font with holes. These holes can save up to 20% of the usual amount of ink needed to print pages with a normal font.

Note though, that this font should not be used to print out important papers. Ecofont is offered as a free download at the creator’s website.

Earlier this year, a study from DoubleClick found that given the choice between two similar products, 83% of consumers will choose those that are “environmentally friendly” and nearly half are willing to pay at least 5% more for them.

Not only this, but consumers’ online experience has a huge influence in their decisions.

Tell Your Story

With this in mind, every business owner, like we do at CQ, should be asking themselves the question, “Do I have a green story to tell? If so what is it? And how am I getting that story out there?”

Make sure your green message is in your customer communications. Put it on your business cards or brochures. Put it on your website. Use search engine optimization techniques so people can find it. You may be surprised of the results obtained…