Alga Carta paper

Welcome to print.coop, the ink-on-paper pages from specialist printing and design co-operative, Calverts. We produce high quality, economical and sustainable, commercial print. We're experts in the latest and best litho and digital printing technology, as well as traditional craft applications. We know almost every commodity grade or 'designer' FSC® or recycled paper on the market, and can tell you about the most cost effective formats.

our approach

Why work with Calverts?

Print buyers come to Calverts for four main reasons - our creativity, quality, expert advice and track record in sustainable printing.

We have proper conversations with our clients, to help them realise their print ambitions - from fairtrade teaching tools and low carbon travel guides to art and science comics and high end books. There's almost no print idea we can't turn into reality.

We have a hard-earned reputation as 'green' printers. We're always investing, learning and sharing what we know about every aspect of low environmental impact communications.

And Calverts worker co-operative business model means we're able to improve continuously, by putting our money into state-of-the art repro and printing hardware, software and training - instead of paying dividends to outside owners and shareholders.

All this adds up to higher quality, higher impact print; timely delivery - and a better print experience.

Get in touch and we'll help you print something beautiful.

ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY

Standards & certification

Design and print affect the environment. Calverts has therefore implemented an environmental management system to the requirements of ISO 14001 to reduce our negative environmental impacts.

We are committed to comply with or exceed the requirements of environmental legislation and other environmental initiatives to which we subscribe. We are also committed to the prevention of pollution and continual improvement.

Our objectives are to:

1) Reduce our carbon emissions

2) Reduce the impact of paper use on natural resources

3) Improve resource efficiency and recycling

We have set up programmes to achieve this with targets and time scales.

Find out more about our environmental initiatives.

Environmental papers

Regents canal at The Oval

On the press-room floor this week, queued for printing, we have some Shiro Alga Carta - an Italian creative paper made from seaweed.

Production of this environmental paper started In the early '90s when pollution in the Adriatic sea resulted in the Venice Lagoon becoming swamped with thousands of tonnes of algae. This reduced the natural oxygen level in the water which in turn killed fish.

In order to combat this problem, algae was collected from the lagoon, dried and finely ground into "flour". The flour was combined with FSC fibres to make a high quality environmentally friendly speckled paper where the speckles are the milled algae.

Interestingly, the paper becomes whiter as it ages due to the chlorophyll in the algae, in direct contrast to the majority of wood-based papers where exposure of lignin to air and sunlight turns paper yellow.

The 50,000 tonnes of algae collected each year is the papermaking equivalent to 30,000 tonnes of trees.

The manufacturing process of Shiro Alga Carta is patented by Favini and the range is available through Fenner Paper in the UK.