Everywhere we turn these days, we hear or read about businesses “Going Green.” The earnest environmentalists (and attendant marketers) who have been plodding away for decades to achieve this kind of groundswell must be in their heyday. Was it Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth that tipped the scales? Certainly the documentary made a compelling case for human complicity in global warming. And it issued an urgent call to action that any conscience-driven person would find hard to ignore. The widely distributed film brought the issue of climate change to the mainstream, and now there seems to be an unprecedented willingness on the part of individuals and businesses to do right by the environment.

The publishing world–and the printing world for that matter–are no exception. And let’s be real here. The printing and distribution of magazines require significant consumption of natural resources—from the trees used for paper to the power running the presses to the fuel used for delivery. When poorly managed, the process can have a significant and lasting impact on the environment. And this is why our customers are asking us, on an almost daily basis, not only about what they can do to become greener publishers but about what we’re doing to be a greener printer.

My response is consistent and time-tested. We are pursuing new initiatives all the time, but Lane Press isn’t going green. We have, in fact, been green. It has been a long-standing imperative for Lane Press to integrate clean manufacturing practices into our business. In some areas, Lane Press has been out in front of the field. We were the first printer in North America to print a nationally distributed magazine on recycled paper containing a high percentage of post-consumer waste. It was the late 1980's, and the publication was aptly named Garbage Magazine. In the 1970’s, we were among one of the first heat-set web offset printers to reduce VOCs (volatile organic compounds) by arduously removing, capturing, and burning the VOC-containing oil released from ink during the printing process. In 1993, we voluntarily invested over $1 million to install a thermal oxidizer that improves this process and effectively removes 99+% of pollutants that would otherwise be emitted into the atmosphere. We added a heat exchanger to this system that takes the heat from the oxidizer and uses it to heat our building and hot water, thereby drastically reducing our consumption of fossil fuels for heating. The operation is more robust than what is required by the State of Vermont, but we selected it because we believe in its superior benefits and we think it was simply the right thing to do.

Our efforts extend to many other aspects of the manufacturing process. With the help of various vendors, none of the solid waste generated by our manufacturing efforts enters a landfill. Virtually everything is either recycled or properly incinerated. We work with a local consortium of energy providers to find creative ways to reduce electricity consumption at our facility, including an ongoing conversion to high-efficiency lighting and equipment motors. We replace ink, wash solvents, and fountain solutions with reformulations lower in VOCs and toxic air contaminants as they become available and test up-to-par with our quality requirements. Keep in mind, we operate in the “Green State”—where the name is not just a reflection of our mountain range (The Green Mountains). Vermont is notorious for strict manufacturing regulations. If we were not a clean business, we would not be permitted to operate in the state. I’m proud to say that Lane Press meets all of Vermont’s strict environmental compliance requirements and, in fact, exceeds many of them.

So that’s our plant and some of what we do here to be green. But what about you, our customers? Many of you are talking about going green. Many of you already have established practices. But, as Kermit would say, “It’s not easy being green.” In the universe of options for publishing more responsibly, it’s hard to know what all of the choices are and what impact they might have on your business. There’s recycled paper, but does that cost more? Is it hard to get? How will it look and feel as the pages of your magazine?

As many of you contemplate and experiment with greener publishing alternatives, you quickly find that every option has its own set of intricacies, all of which have a potential impact on your business. Again, take paper. Today, there are a dizzying number of options to consider. There’s paper with recycled content, paper harvested from sustainably managed forests, paper whitened without the use of chlorine, paper manufactured using renewable energy….

The options are exciting (albeit overwhelming), but they also have direct impact on your business. In the case of paper, among the many issues to consider are cost (typically there is premium for specialized paper), availability (some sheets require longer lead-time), printability (not all types of paper are compatible with heat-set web offset presses) and appearance (recycled paper, for instance, can have a rougher texture and flecked appearance depending on the percentage of post-consumer waste content). Weighing these issues against your desire—and that of your members or subscribers—to be green is a challenge to say the least. As your printer—and your partner—we bring to the table the expertise to help you navigate these issues. Armed with an understanding of your unique business, we help you find solutions that balance your desire to be green with your need to meet the bottom line. To get you headed in the right direction, we’ve included an article in this newsletter about specific steps you can take to green-up your publishing efforts. We’ve also included news about our newly acquired Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) chain-of-custody certification, which enables Lane Press to supply you with paper that has been sustainably produced.

As I look out my office window at the rolling green mountains of Vermont, I am reminded each day of the importance of protecting our environment for future generations. While this is a charge we take seriously, you won’t see us adopting new practices or technology simply because other printers are doing it. Each initiative we pursue--whether to improve our manufacturing practices or to provide greener customer-facing tools and materials—is carefully considered for its true efficacy and its effect on the cost, time, and quality of your print projects.