The True Cost of 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.

Sustainability

Mandy Haggith's book 'Paper Trails' combines passionate description and cold analysis of the destruction of old growth forest around the world, to feed the 'developed' economies' voracious appetite for paper products, from tissues to packaging and junk mail. Paper Trails 001 Haggith supports Shrink Paper and Forest Movement Europe (FME) - itself made up of big campaigns like Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and the WWF, plus a long tail of smaller organisations.

Shrink Paper's aim is nothing less than to reduce Europe's consumption of paper by 50%, and it has provoked a concerted PR backlash from the European papermaking industry, as well as some of the larger printing companies, who have created a campaign called Two Sides to defend their record on the environment and social impacts, and rebut what it calls the 6 Myths about paper.

Haggith's argument is that the social impacts of old growth forest destruction, and the creation of monoculture plantations, are even more pernicious than their environmental impacts. All over the world - from Canada to northern Russia, Indonesia and South America - indigenous and local peole's livelihoods and freedoms are under attack because of the paper industry's depradations.

It's worth quoting from FME's manifesto at more length: " We .. want to see a Europe that consumes dramatically less paper than at present, with all that paper made by an industry that is less reliant on virgin tree fibres, maximises the use of recycled materials, respects local peoples' land-rights, provides employment and has social impacts that are beneficial, conflict free and fair."

Calverts supports the basic propositions of Paper Trails, even though we realise that this means working in an industry - design for print - that needs to shrink even faster than the 4-5% per annum of the last decade. In fact, we would like to see a 'Fair Trade' mark for forest products which guarantees prices and standards for producer co-operatives.

Calverts has long advocated and promoted 100% or part-recycled paper as the way forward for any designer or publisher who is seriously interested in improving the environmental impacts of our trade. Although we are Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified printers, we think that 'sustainably sourced' virgin fibre paper comes second.

Printers - and print designers - are gatekeepers of our society's use of graphic paper, and we take that responsibility seriously. We know that good design, informed by careful media planning and an understanding of the technicalities of the print production process, can reduce the quantity, impacts and financial cost of most projects by at least 20% . We have three copies of Paper Trails to give away (oh and by the way, yes it's exemplary book design and uses 100% recycled paper.) If you'd like one, email news@calverts.coop or ring +44 (0) 20 7739 1474 and ask for Sion Whellens, the author of this post. Good reading! Paper Trails - The True Cost of Paper is published by Virgin Books, ISBN 978-0-7535-1329-3