Better Stewards of Our Environment
As the weather here has been taking a cooler turn, I’ve been finding almost daily purchases arriving for my twin daughters from AliXpress and Shein (If you don’t know, don’t learn). These sites are global powerhouses of quickly delivering low-quality stuff that lasts for a day and then is intended for rapid disposal and replacement by more. Not only does the material waste and impact bother me but think of the environmental impact of the shipping process or the labor impacts in low-cost countries. This got me talking with Alston about how we can be better stewards of the environment, whether as designers, their clients, or their stakeholders. Following are a few thoughts that I hope can stimulate some thought and dialogue about printed materials.
So, printed materials are powerful tools we all use to make our message heard and understood and influence change. Are you telling me we have to give this up? No, take a breath: the good news is that almost 70% of paper used in the printing industry can be and often is recycled. That said, 30% is generally not and again, that does not include all the other impacts such as shipping, labor, etc. We can do better.
To begin with, let’s focus on the driver of printing, not just the things we want the document to do but rather how we do it. The volume of the printing we do is ultimately driven by the artifacts we choose to put into our documents, e.g. words, images, tables, and the audience to which we send the finished pieces. So how can we change?
First, take more care and time getting your messages sharp and focused. Carefully and repeatedly edit down your documents to get to the heart of the goal, ruthlessly pruning things that are not relevant. It’s not necessarily important to have 50 images of essentially the same thing or details of every point. Not only does reducing the content, where appropriate, reduce the volume of pages that are printed but it has at least two other benefits. It makes your message more clear and focused for you audience. This is the day of Tik Tok and short form video; few people want extraneous information and including it risk people ignoring your document. In addition, fewer printed pages lower the production and shipping costs.
Second, and I am reminded of this every year as we update the Studio Red Design holiday mailing list, examine your mailing lists. Think about whether every person wants to, or needs to, receive the document in a printed form — edit down or up as needed to makes sense. Consider alternate distribution approaches, such as email, posting on social media, etc. This habit not only helps manage expense and reduce environmental impacts but it also helps keep laser-like focus on your audience.
Finally, and perhaps most simply, use recycled materials whenever possible. While the paper market has been very tough these last few years the one thing you can be sure of is that manufactures of paper, like and good, take notice of what people want. This is basic economics - the more recycled materials we demand, the more they will supply. It may not yet be possible to get to zero new paper for every aspect of your document production and shipping process but each percentage point you can improve it means a better world for you, your organization, your audience, and your stakeholders. Start the zero-new challenge and do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good - as Bill Murray said in “What about Bob”….”baby steps!”
So, buy and print with intention. Maybe less is more….
Use FSC-certified materials and printers.
Look to reduce waste (ideas from the EPA)
Reuse and recycle more so that less ends up in landfills. Creatively repurpose or share: trashnothing.com, craigslist.org, freecycle.org. Or donate (and shop, if needed) at a local thrift store!
But back to print design…the whole team hear at Studio Red Design looks forward to partnering with you to investigate how your message can pop with the Goldilocks amount of paper….JUST RIGHT!
