Sherwood Press and local PaperCo merchant, Rothera & Brereton, have worked together on an environmental print project which claims to be a first. Sherwood Press is the first company to use a Carbon Balanced Paper from PaperCo for a project. The job is for Cath Tate Cards, which is a specialist greetings card company with an especially large range of humour based cards and prides itself on a keenly environmental approach to its whole business.
Sherwood Press has long established credentials for its commitment to environmental print and packaging. Last year the company assessed its materials purchased and the analysis showed 59% of materials purchased for commercial print and greetings cards were obtained from 100% FSC or PEFC for these markets. The company however has since set itself a target of 100% from these sources and this target has been achieved for October, November and December 2010. The company now aims to carry forward this analysis and measurement into the packaging sector where it will also include recycled board and which environmental manager Ian Liddle acknowledges will be a more difficult process.
“Sherwood Press is totally committed to environmental print not just in the use of materials but also in our own housekeeping. We constantly reduce waste and have a long term target of zero landfill, which our environmental team are currently working towards” says Ian.
The new range of greetings cards using Carbon Balanced Paper was launched by Cath Tate Cards at this years Spring Fair at the NEC in February and proved to be hugely popular with buyers at the show, including several from overseas. Cath Tate is very committed personally to environmental issues and expects her new range of cards using Carbon Balanced Paper to be very successful.
”We like to offer something which allows people to be both environmental and cheeky at the same time” says Cath. “It is great to be able to publish greetings cards with minimised environmental impacts and I am very excited to be involved with this project. With the environment so much in the foreground of public opinion, I believe we have a new product which card buyers will really appreciate.”
The Carbon Balancing scheme comes under a partnership agreement between international biodiversity conservation organisation The World Land Trust and The Paper Company (PaperCo). The Trust has been working to purchase and protect threatened habitats and species throughout the world for over 21 years, securing over 500.000 acres to date. Its Carbon Balanced programme, launched in 2005, helps organisations offset their unavoidable carbon emmisions through projects that preserve and restore key tropical forest habitats under the most imminent threat of destruction.
Every organisation creates carbon at some stage, or several stages, of manufacturing, distribution and consumption. Some printers already offset this element of their business by creating a carbon saving equivalent. The World Land Trust uses funding from the sale of Carbon Balanced Paper to undertake restoration ecology projects, which offset emmisions from the paper’s production though the protection of critically threatened forest and reforestation of degraded habitat.
PaperCo have developed the Carbon Balanced paper concept to meet the growing needs of its own and customer companies corporate and social responsibility programmes. In addition, its distribution sister company DeliveryCo uses Tear Drop delivery vehicles contoured to reduce fuel consumption and therefore CO2 emissions.
Rothera & Brereton’s Simon Bishop comments “We are pleased to have worked with Sherwood Press in the production of this new range of Cath Tate cards, reducing their environmental impacts by Balancing the Carbon impacts of the paper through the World Land Trust. We see an increasing demand for Carbon Balanced materials in the print and packaging industry as the lobby for carbon reduction continues to grow. Carbon Balancing this project will – preserve 207 sq metres of threatened tropical forest.”
