Greening It Up...October 16, 2008
Nothing new really...
Zandergraphics has always made serious efforts to reduce, reuse, and recycle wherever possible, both as a simple matter of business economy and as a way to do our part to ease the strain on the environment. However, with the recent expansion of our in-house printing capabilities, we have been able to take those efforts one step further.
The new papers...
Though we are still working on finding good, affordable suppliers for certain paper products, we have already received our first shipment of 100% post-consumer recycled letter and legal sized papers, which will most likely account for the bulk of our in-house runs. Other products, such as card stock and glossy paper stocks are proving to be a challenge to find in 100% PCW recycled forms. Therefore, our new rule is looking to be that we will make every effort to use at least 30% recycled paper for all in-house production runs, and will use the highest level of recycled material reasonably available.
Why only 30%?
Well, as I said above, part of the reason for this is that some products simply are not available in 100% recycled forms. But additionally, some of the products that we have found are extremely high priced when compared with 30% recycled products. In cases like these, we will offer both options as a courtesy to our clients. We will continue searching and building relationships with different suppliers in an effort to offer the best and most reasonably priced recycled paper and products. The move to recycled came about in part due to the fact that, by buying in bulk, we can get 100% recycled paper (at least letter and legal sized) for prices not much higher than you'd pay in a store for non-recycled paper.
Some examples...
Just to illustrate some of the dillemmas of buying recycled paper that we have to weigh and research the best option from many aspects, let's look at envelopes. Envelopes that are 30% recycled cost about 25% more than non-recycled envelopes, while 100% recycled envelopes cost 3 times the non-recycled price... and this is a pretty mild example.
Card stock that is 30% recycled is just slightly more expensive than its non-recycled counterpart, however, if you move to 100% recycled, the price doubles from the 30% price. Obviously, we need to make sure that our clients can stay within a reasonable budget, so for the time being at least, our default card stock is the 30% recycled variety. We are, as I said earlier, always looking into new suppliers and trying out different recycled products to find the highest quality and best price for any project that you may have.
Unfortunately, many printers really gouge people on recycled products, so it is possible with some large run jobs that we may still need to offer printing on virgin (non-recycled) papers simply as a matter of economy. On in-house jobs we can swap out the paper easily and without much added expense, however, on a large run job of say 5000 copies of an 8-page job, the difference would be quite significant, probably over $500 for the run on a $2500-3000 job.
The bottom line really is that we are doing everything we can to make sure that our clients and the environment are cared for.
Kyle Gonyea
Creative Director
Zandergraphics Studio
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