Big Green Printer Tour – Anderson Lithograph

[Photo Slideshow Link for Email/Other Subscribers]

In June 08, a friend of mine took me on a tour of acclaimed printing company Anderson Lithograph in Los Angeles. At the time, all I knew was that they were BIG, and publish just about anything except books and magazines. Clients include ALL the car manufacturers, various universities, Target Stores, and a variety of other large-to-medium size enterprises.

So while I learned about the business and step-by-step operations of a printing company (interesting enough), I’ll spare you those details and elaborate a little on the sustainable operations which correspond to the order of pictures in the slideshow above:

• Electricity is produced on-site through cogeneration. Natural gas is fed into the jet-like engine which in turn…um, the rest is a little hazy in my mind. But the cool part is that the air intake uses the facility’s indoor air, and in the process destroys all the VOCs (volatile organic compounds) emitted from the ink. Under normal conditions a printer will pump out their indoor air, for which they need permits. Other aspects of this integrated environmental management system include water recycling and heat capturing/repurposing.
• Unrelated to green but cool nonetheless, photos of the high-speed print run are for a Target Stores mailer.
• The ink buckets in the big bags aren’t landfilled, but sold to a local company that repurposes them.
• Those ink vats I’m standing next to are massive huh? While I believe those are sent back to the manufacturer, the bigger question is what happens to all the excess ink in the offset printing process? Turns out it’s sent to a brick company in Kansas that uses the ink as fuel for their furnace.
• In cutting all the printed sheets to desired specifications, the excess scrap paper from around the plant is collected in vacuum ducts, and is then fed into this bundling machine that makes these massive bales of paper, which are then purchased and recycled by a 3rd party.

So while a printer may be FSC certified (which only means they segregate certified paper and print jobs) and claim to use soy inks (this is a marketing ploy, as any vegetable-based ink is perfectly fine, although not universally appropriate for all print jobs), the real indicators of a ‘green’ printer lie in its operations. Seek out this information in evaluating a printer, so as to make a fair assessment.