Mereja

Author: Heidi Tolliver-Nigro

  • Do Plastic Envelopes Undermine a Green Mailing?

    Recently, I was privileged to participate on a judging panel in an international printing contest. One of the categories was environmental printing. In that category, an entrant had submitted a very interesting postcard made of 100% recycled paper and containing seeds in the paper fiber, enabling the postcard to be planted.

    The message was environmental, and the use of 100% recycled stock and the ability to plant the resulting postcard and return it to the earth made a strong environmental statement. But the paper was fragile, so the postcard had to be mailed in a clear envelope to protect it during the mailing process.

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  • Measuring the Carbon Footprint of Spam

    Looking for more reasons to hate spam? Here’s one. According to McAfee and ICF International, annual spam energy use totals 33 billion kilowatt-hours (KWh). That’s equivalent to the electricity used in 2.4 million homes in the United States, with the same GHG emissions as 3.1 million passenger cars using two billion United States gallons of gasoline.

    This comes from The Carbon Footprint of Email Spam Report (download here).

    The good news is that spam filtering makes a difference. According to McAfee, spam filtering saves 135 TWh of electricity per year. That’s like taking 13 million cars off the road.

    In fact, if every inbox were protected by a state-of-the art spam filter, organizations and individuals could reduce today’s spam energy by approximately 75% or 25 TWh per year. That’s equivalent
    to taking 2.3 million cars off the road.

    Filtering spam doesn’t seem like a huge environmental contribution when there are 42,000 gallons of oil from the Deep Horizon oil disaster still gushing into the Gulf Coast every day, but when you look at it from a global perspective, it makes a difference.

    Besides, I can’t do anything about the oil in the Gulf Coast. But I can do something about my spam.

  • Report: Greening Print Marketing: A Practical Guide

    I hope you’ll indulge me and let me get on my soap box for a minute. I recently released a new report in my Marketer’s Primer Series, “Greening Print Marketing: A Practical Guide.” One of the most surprising pieces of feedback I’ve gotten from printers is, “My clients don’t care anymore.”

    With all the media discussion about green these days, my first question was, “Are you sure?”

    People do care about the environment. In fact, studies show that consumers are committed to green products even in a down economy. In addition, they are often willing to pay more for them. It’s a hot topic in the news media and B2B world. How can clients not care? Of course they care.

    So what’s going on?

    In the raging debate about what’s greener than what, it’s become confusing. There are real solutions, but it’s just too hard to know who’s telling the truth. One company says this. Another says that. They all contradict one another. So why even try? It’s easier to throw your hands up in the air and forget about it. If green evangelists on every side are going to make it this difficult, we’ll just tune it out completely.

    Does this sound familiar? Most likely, it does. But rather suggesting that clients don’t care, it suggests they are simply paralyzed into inertia.

    What if you could offer them a way to green their print marketing that nobody can argue with? What if it actually cost them less money and made their marketing more effective? Now you’re talking, right?

    Here is it, and it’s not rocket science.

    Targeting marketing and personalization are green printing. How? By their very nature, they reduce unnecessary print volumes. (Key word here is “unnecessary.”) Why sent a 64-page booklet filled with irrelevant information when you can send a 16-page brochure with targeted, relevant material? You make your marketing program more effective while saving the planet at the same time. Or how about this? Cleanse your database on a regular basis. Run it through NCOA. Why mail to people who don’t live there anymore?

    Is this the end-all, be-all for greening? Of course not. But greening and personalization go hand in hand. If you’ve been looking for a way to move your clients into targeting and personalization, this is another reason to get them to do it.

  • Does PCW Paper Really Save Energy? It’s Worth Asking the Question

    My last post on questioning conventional wisdom on recycled paper generated some terrific comments. After all, when you look more deeply into some of these issues, they aren’t all they are cracked up to be. Is possible that post-consumer waste (PCW) paper isn’t as green as we think it is? The question was worth asking.

    One of the people commenting on the post made this interesting observation: “Post-consumer wastes do consume more energy to recycle than mill-broke or pre-consumer, but if the energy required to reacquire it all is less than producing new paper from trees, then I believe it is still a worthy quest.”

    That is a question worth asking, and it generates yet another question. How does the energy to create PCW paper compare to that used to create paper from virgin paper? I did some digging and tried to find out. Here are some of the stats I uncovered: (more…)

  • Questioning Conventional Wisdom on PCW Recycled Paper

    I’ve been thinking about postconsumer waste lately (apparently, I have too much time on my hands). What I was wondering was this:

    Postconsumer waste is only one of three waste streams for unused paper. There is also mill broke (scrap collected at the mill and recycled back into the same type of paper from whence it came); and there is pre-consumer waste (paper trimmings and other scrap collected at the printing or converting site and recycled back to the mill before reaching the hands of the consumer).

    So here’s what I’m wondering. Both mill broke and pre-consumer waste are recycled back much earlier in the process, so they require less energy to transport. They also need less processing in most cases because they have not yet been printed, glued, laminated or otherwise converted. Post-consumer waste, on the other hand, has to be collected from millions of individual homes and businesses around the country. Then it has to be sorted and processed, and sometimes even bleached. The energy and processing requirements are far greater. So why is post-consumer waste considered greener?

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  • Newspapers May Be Greener, But What About Redundancy?

    If you want to “green” your news reading, just go online, right? Ditch that dirty, landfill-clogging paper. Not so fast, argues Sarah Westervelt, environmental expert and activist. In a recent article on The Dead Tree Edition, Westervelt said that she was “too informed about what’s going to happen to my computer when I’m done with it” to feel good about reading Web news and gave a number of compelling reasons that newspapers are actually the greener choice.

    Among her reasons for rejecting e-news, as reported by The Dead Tree Edition, the toxic materials contained in electronic devices and a complex waste cycle (including more than a dozen plastics in each), combined with not enough value in re-use to make recycling the parts non-economical. Paper, on the other hand, comes from a renewable resource, doesn’t contain the toxic materials, and is highly recyclable.

    The post is a great read, and it certainly makes you think about the consequences of our wired world. (Some of the arguments that have been made against Apple’s new iPad.)

    At the same time — and while I cannot disagree with Westervelt’s facts — this argument really only works if it’s an either-or proposition. (more…)

  • Green Print, Paper, and Marketing Conferences for February

    Looking to get a little green into your conference schedule? There are a number of printing, marketing, and paper-related events coming that touch on a variety of business and marketing topics from a sustainability perspective. Some require you to leave your office. Others don’t.

    Thanks to What They Think’s Going Green section for this list.

  • Lessons Learned from an Envelope Box Turned Inside Out

    I did something a little nuts today. I have run a small niche publishing business since 2000, and I learned very quickly that when you print books on demand and sell them retail, you either lose nearly all your profit margin by buying packing boxes or you have to charge a lot more than you might be comfortable doing. My goal was to charge less for shipping than Amazon and the others, so charging full shipping cost to cover the mailers defeated the purpose. So I looked at the stacks of envelopes and boxes in the corner, waiting to go into the trash, and thought, “Recycle!”

    Now, the Strong Tower Publishing titles page has a little disclaimer:

    Did you know? Strong Tower Publishing recycles. While we sell directly to the public, our direct sales are relatively small, so you may find your book packed in a recycled box or with recycled paper. This allows us to protect the environment and keep our shipping prices extremely low.

    This morning, however, when I went to look for a used padded envelope or box, I was completely out of them. There was an unopened bag of yellow mailing envelopes, but I hesitated. Then there it was, the empty envelope box. Perfect! So I cut along the seams, turned it inside out, and it fit perfectly around the book. A few staples, some tape, and a mailing label. Done!

    Granted, it took me 15 minutes to get it together, so I’m not suggesting that companies trade in their efficiency so every piece of scrap can have a second life. It’s the premise I think that is relevant here. We too easily trade convenience for environmental responsibility. (more…)

  • It’s All About the Paper — New Online Blog & Community

    For marketers looking to improve the sustainability of their print marketing programs, there is almost nothing more important than the role of the paper. For this reason, Wausau Paper has launched a new online community, Digital Space, for designers, printers, and other experts in digital print technology and applications.

    The site includes both a collaborative, social media aspect and a blog community featuring experts on paper, printing, and sustainability. Among those experts is, well, me. I will be a regular contributor on topics related to digital printing and the greening of print marketing.

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  • Green Your Packaging Now — Before They Make You Do It

    Eco-Friendly Dishwasher DetergentsWhen we think about greening “print,” we often think about books or marketing communications like direct mail. But what about the world of packaging? Because packaging provides the additional functions of shipment and product protection as well as marketing, it brings a host of unique issues far beyond other types of printed materials.

    Plus, it’s on the verge of being regulated.

    Multichannel Merchant recently noted that regulations such as PAS 2050 (developed in the U.K.) limit, among other things, the impact of packaging on carbon emissions throughout the product lifecycle. The World Resources Institute is now reviewing how to leverage PAS 2050 for the U.S.

    This matters so much because “green” packaging is more than about using recycled or earth-friendly materials in the packaging itself. It’s about the entire packaging lifecycle, including distribution and disposal.

    For example, have you thought about what happens when packaging doesn’t properly protect the product?

    Read more of this story »

  • What’s Your Green Resolution for 2010?

    It’s the time of year when people are making resolutions to lose weight, better manage their finances, better manage their anger, and myriad other things. Is increasing your commitment to environmental sustainability on that list?

    As I wrote in my very first post for The Inspired Economist in the fall of 2008, the neat thing about committing to environmental sustainability is that you don’t have to make extreme changes to make a difference. You don’t have to install hemp carpet in the office or replace your roof with solar panels.

    If we all make small incremental changes, the difference will be exponential. It’s a lot easier to get a lot of people to make small changes than to rely on a few people to carry the entire load.

    What small, incremental changes can you pledge to make this year? Here are a few ideas.

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  • “Green” Yearbooks? We’re Getting There!

    In my daughter’s backpack this morning, I discovered a note about school pictures, soon to be delivered. That brings to mind the topic of yearbooks. Here’s a product that has everything wrong with it from an environmental standpoint — coated paper (making the paper difficult to recycle), tons of ink, lots of unnecessary pages, and never recycled.

    As schools and other educational institutions plan for next year’s yearbook process, is there a way to make it more environmentally friendly?

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  • Decrease Your Carbon Footprint 2600% — With One Click

    Do you like to play with online tools? I do. I like environmental calculators. It’s fun to plug in a bunch of numbers and see what you come up with.

    Take environmental calculators offered by paper companies. Want to know how much you can green your print marketing just by making a simple switch? They’ll tell you. With a few clicks, they’ll tell you how much you can save in water, trees, landfill waste, BTUs of energy, and more simply by switching from virgin to a variety of other stocks with postconsumer waste (PCW) content.

    What’s incredible is how little it takes to make a huge difference. Simply by increasing your PCW content from, say, 10% to 25%, you can actually decrease your carbon footprint by thousands of percent. For example, using the environmental calculator from Wausau Paper (500 sheets of 8.5 x 11″ with 10% PCW content), I could save the following:

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  • Marketing: Be More Effective, Cut Fewer Trees

    I love when I hear about marketing campaigns that have a double benefit — they are more effective than traditional campaigns and they are greener, too. How does this happen?

    Typically, it happens because marketers make smarter use of their databases. They select out a portion of their customer databases and create more customized or even fully personalized campaigns that, when done right, are more effective than static campaigns. I’ve written up case studies showing ROIs of 10:1, 80:1, even 1200:1.

    From an environmental perspective, these campaigns are fabulous because by using only a portion of the database, they are slashing your carbon footprint, too. If you send to 20% of your database, you just reduced your environmental impact by 80%. At the same time, you are actually getting a better return.

    Take the example of Club ABC Tours.

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  • Greening Your Business — For Free!

    Can you green your business for free? With the right qualifiers, you might. There is at least one company that will take a comprehensive look at your organization, project out the amount of money it can save on your electric bill by installing greener technologies, and outfit you — free — on a contingency basis and through performance contracts.

    Certainly, there are other companies offering similar services. For this reason, this post is not intended as an advertisement for this particular company, but I will use it as an illustration of this business model. If there are other companies offering savings-based energy services, please let me know and I’ll compile a list for a future post.

    Here’s how the process works:

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  • Smart Marketing = Greener Printing for J. C. Penney

    One of the terrific things about greening a print marketing program is that many of the best practices in marketing today have “green” as a by-product.

    Take the example of J. C. Penney, which made marketing headlines today when it announced that it would be discontinuing its semi-annual Big Book catalog after the Fall-Winter 09 season. Over the years, J. C. Penney was finding that its catalog was less a direct selling channel than a way to prime the pump for online sales. Instead of wasting volumes of paper, ink, and coating — not to mention the fossil fuels to deliver the 800-1000-page books — it decided to slim things down.

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