Helping your Printing business improve its Eco-Efficiency

Environment is a key external driver for the book production industry, right from the forest, to the press, on to the use and final disposal of books. PRINT21, the printing industries action agenda for the future, recognised that environmental excellence was a key contributor to the continued competitiveness of the industry.

Environment is a key external driver for the book production industry, right from the forest, to the press, on to the use and final disposal of books. PRINT21, the printing industries action agenda for the future, recognised that environmental excellence was a key contributor to the continued competitiveness of the industry.

PIAA - WA and CECP are planning to launch an Eco-Efficiency Assistance Program for the Book Production Industry to assist businesses in the book producing industry with the implementation of Eco-Efficiency practices that enhance their economic and ecological performance ('eco-efficiency'). The assistance program will tentatively consist of a guided benchmarking service, provision of diagnostic tools and best practice guidelines, and capacity building to enable book production businesses to implement Eco-Efficiency measures. Initially this work will result in four outputs

1. Review of publicly available Eco-Efficiency and/or Cleaner Production case studies from the Australian book production industry
2. Survey of the awareness and uptake of Eco-Efficiency principles and practices among book production enterprises
3. Development of new Eco-Efficiency case studies
4. Preliminary Eco-Efficiency benchmarking

Current Case Studies

• Solvent-free Dampner Cleaning - The Printing Office
• Reduction of Solvent Use in Cleaning of Printing Screens - Cutler Brands
• Solvent Recovery in Flexographic Printing - Fildes Pty Ltd 
• Reduction in Solvents for Cleaning - Amcor Packaging (Australia)
• Solvent Reduction - WR Grace (Australia)
• Material recovery and recycling - Finsbury Print