An Arlington printing company is described as planning for tomorrow while delivering a great, eco-friendly print product today.

Beginning with the cutting of trees and ending with printing and distribution, each piece of this process generates its own weight in carbon dioxide.  Adding transportation and decomposition in a landfill to the mix, the numbers for greenhouse gas admissions could rise to several tons.

A Virginia printing company believes print jobs could be made more ethical by scouring recycled materials or materials from sustainable forests; using vegetable oil based ink and low alcohol combinations; reducing the amount of chemicals used in plate production; turning machines off when not in use and whenever possible avoiding lamination - which renders paper virtually impossible to recycle, could all help with the environmental impact of printing and packaging.

A printing company Washington, DC has also joined the environmentally conscious printing community.  Many of these printing companies have decided to help the environment by convincing their customers to go with printing on smaller packaging.  Smaller packaging not only saves in the environment but saves companies hundreds of thousands of dollars in wasted space from packaging air with their goods.

Besides reducing the package sizing, making products more light weight is another way to help the environment.  A beer company recently redesigned their beer bottles to contain 30% less glass reducing the brewery’s usage of glass by 642 tons per year.  Procter & Gamble and Unilever have both reconsidered their laundry soap package design and their ingredients to include concentrates which not only help reduce the amount of packaging, but makes it easier for people to carry the once bulky product. 

The print on some of these smaller packages may appear minor; however most print remains the same size and has been rewritten to reduce and contain the same instructions in fewer words.  And instead of printing on plastic labels, a return to paper-based labels will also help with recycling efforts because the plastic combination labels do not decompose whereas the paper labels have a higher, faster decomposition rate.