Sustainable Printing

Today on Sustainable Printing, I want to delve into what our lives would be like if printing suddenly ceased in all forms and fashions.  A lot of environmentalists would like to live in a “paperless” world, but I want to take that a step further and explore a “printless” world.  Would that be a good place to live?

Without printing, we wouldn’t have photographs.  We all remember photographs right?  Since the onset of digital cameras, I’m sure printing photographs has declined somewhat, but what if we couldn’t print photos of our child’s Halloween costume, sister’s wedding or parents’ anniversary party?  My mom creates beautiful scrapbooks of our family, and one of the albums she calls the “Heritage Album”.  This book has photos of her great, great grandparents…some dating back to the 1890s.  Without prints, we would lose out on a part of our history.

What about all the formal documents one needs during his or her lifetime?  Birth certificate, social security card, passport, driver’s license, high school diploma, marriage license, etc.?  Would we need to have such identifiers tattooed on our bodies somewhere?

Imagine what going to any store would be like if none of the packages had printing on them.  Your box of Captain Crunch would look identical to the Cocoa Crispies sitting next to it.  How would we recognize which DVD we want to buy if they had no printed insert telling us which movie is inside?

And how could we pay for such merchandise without paper currency?  Would we be standing at the checkout with giant bags of coins?  There wouldn’t be any barcodes to utilize the quick scanners at the checkout, so we’d probably be in line long enough waiting for our totals to count the coins we’d need to use to pay for our items.

I know this was a fanciful illustration of a completely impossible world (at least in my lifetime), but doesn’t it get your noodle cookin’?

I’d like to take a moment to announce today on Sustainable Printing the birth of my newest family addition.  Gloria Renee came to us on Wednesday June 17 in a wonderfully quick and peaceful way.  I was fortunate enough to deliver her in a birthing tub at the Greenhouse Birth Center here in Michigan.

While I enjoy my new daughter, I have to think about any formal birth announcement I may want to do.  Personally, I’ve never been too keen on birth announcements, but over the course of my career, I have seen some that were so incredibly beautiful.  Typically, birth annoucements are printed on cardstock with a full bleed.  Of course, this is simply what I have seen most often, but like with any print project, the sky’s the limit.

Well, most of you know how I feel about bleeds as a sustainable print option (if not, see my related posts), so that doesn’t sit right with my eco-ethics.  And frankly, addressing and mailing out 50+ announcements is not high on my priority list.

So I think I may send out e-announcements.  This is a fantastic option that allows me all the design features that would normally be not so ecofriendly (like bleeds or an odd size), but yet can still look amazing.  Also, I save on paper, energy & postage…quite environmentally friendly.

Related Posts:

To Bleed or Not to Bleed

Planning Your Printing - Graphic Design

If you’ve been a reader of Sustainable Printing for a while (or have at least visited my About page), you know that I currently work remotely for a sustainable digital print shop.  The shop is located in Boulder, Colorado and my home is located in Central Michigan.  However, from time to time, I do have to make a pilgrimage back to the mother ship and such a time is now upon me.

I fly out tomorrow morning to spend a few days ironing out the kinks for when I go on maternity leave.  I haven’t had to travel since last September, so I’m a little nervous.  We have new customers and staff that I will be meeting for the first time, which can always be a little intimidating, but doing so while almost 8 months pregnant with 35 extra pounds  around my midsection makes the experience unique.

I am looking forward to seeing more of what the shop has been doing for our sustainability efforts since my last visit.  We have new recycled stock options that I haven’t seen, but have been selling to my clients.  We added new graphics to our delivery vehicle and moved some equipment around the shop for a more efficient workflow.  I really have a strong appreciation for my boss and the commitment he brings to this company, so it will be great to see him again to and talk about our forward direction.

I still plan on posting while I’m “gone”, so don’t worry!  I’ll keep writing if you keep reading!

Photo by Flickr user The Shane H 

Related Post - Working From Home  

Just wanted to take the time today to wish everyone a very Happy Easter!  It’s a beautiful day with the sun shining and blue skies as far as the eye can see.  I’ll be going to my husband’s grandparents’ farm and stuffing myself with good ol’ country cookin’!  Here’s my lil’ guy from last year’s Easter…ain’t he adorable??

Hello my entrecard (an non-entrecard) friends!  I wanted to let you all know that I have decided to lessen my EC efforts due to some policy changes here at today.com as well as my lack of time to spend on dropping.  I wanted to let all of you know that I will keep my widget for any of you who would like to advertise (so long as it’s not a paid ad) on my site.  However, because I have found some really amazing blogs through entrecard, I wanted to make it easy for all of us to stay in touch.  If you would like to exchange links in a blogroll, please drop me a comment.  Good luck with all your EC endeavors!!