Kiwi printers urged to look at two sides

Delegates at the PrintNZ conference, at Sky City in Auckland, received advice on how to counter the decrease in revenue from competing digital media.

Kellie Northwood, executive director of Two Sides, crossed the Tasman to deliver a strong message to the conference today. She says, “In the past 22 years, the print industry has reduced its environmental impact by 96 per cent. So printers should not be apologetic about the effect our industry has on the environment.”

She believes the print and paper industries need to choose the discussion that has relevance to the industry and their clients. She says, “You need to change the conversation, which needs to be around how you are going to convince your customers that print is effective; print has a strong return on investment; and print has great environmental credentials.’

Backing her argument with statistics, Northwood points out that print compares incredibly well with other media in environmental terms. She says, “When you look at carbon footprints, television has the highest emissions of any media. Plus large screen televisions are not commercially recyclable, that means companies can’t make money from recycling them. Smartphones aren’t recyclable either. Of course, paper and print don’t emit anything when you read them outside in the sunshine.”

She also touched on a new concept: cradle to cradle. She says, “At the moment we talk about reduce, re-use and recycle but this new concept is based on nature. For example, when fruit falls from a tree, it decomposes on the ground. It doesn’t need recycling. So, this different approach asks, ‘Is sustainable good enough?’”

She says that, adopting a cradle to cradle philosophy means doing what nature does. She adds, “With this approach, paper becomes more than sustainable. You can forget recycling; cradle to cradle paper decomposes without adding any chemicals to it.”

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