The Clear Skies Sustainability Program is an umbrella scheme covering its environmental management systems, community involvement, staff and hiring policy, sustainable business and carbon emissions, said Angus Dorney, general manager of strategy and business development.
The first stage of the program’s rollout is the ‘Environmental Leadership’ brochure now being sent out to customers. Dorney is also running a training program to help salespeople and account managers communicate the Clear Skies message.
Dorney told ProPrint that Clear Skies showed Blue Star’s strong sustainability credentials, including FSC, PEFC and ISO 14001, and proved that being green also made business sense.
The first of its operations to get ISO 14001 was Blue Star Print in Victoria in November 2008. The sheetfed and digital businesses secured FSC in May 2008.
Webstar attained PEFC in May 2009, and Dorney added: “There is much better availability of PEFC paper for web printing so PEFC-certified stocks are more commonly used for magazines.”
The company has made a “considerable investment” of time and money to secure environmental badges. For instance, Dorney said that attaining ISO 14001 in Victoria had taken nine months, including one full-time staff member for six months plus external consultants at a total cost of around $100,000.
Blue Star customers will be able to get carbon reports for print runs, as well as compare a job’s footprint based on different production process.
For instance, producing the Environmental Leadership brochure created 60g of CO2. Printing it on a desktop printer would create 115-260g of CO2 while every time the brochure was read on a computer, it would produce 25-55g of CO2.
Dorney said sensitivity to greenwashing was high, so it was crucial Blue Star could back up any of its claims with hard facts.
“We have the data and justification ready to share with our customers at their request. To critics, I would say come and look at the data and you’ll see this is more than just greenwash.”
He said it was still early days in terms of the science behind carbon neutrality and offsets.
“The position we want to take is very contrary to the greenwashing that goes on in the industry, with printers claiming they are carbon neutral when it is not what it seems.”
He said the Clear Skies brand would also extend to other corporate social responsibility activities, such as Blue Star’s “longstanding support” of the Heart Foundation and Paralympics NZ.
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