The 36-page Carbon and Energy Reduction report is the latest of its Energy Efficiency and Sustainable Energy and Environment reports, and is the result of two years of collaborative research.

Announcing the report at a press conference at Ifra today, PrintCity managing director Rainer Kuhn said that it would reveal a number of statistics that showed newspaper was in no way more of an environmental burden than media such as television and the internet.

He said: “The complete production of pulp, paper and print in Europe produces aound 0.6% of the total greenhouse gas and yet everybody thinks of newspapers as unenvironmental. The report will also reveal that electronic media produces over 4% of the total.

“The use of renewable energy in the paper and printing industry is also very much advanced. In Europe and the US 60% of the energy being used in the sector is already coming from renewable energy.”

He added that newspapers and magazines were the only form of media to have a “one-time” carbon footprint, which is finished once the product is made. He said: “Every time you use the television or the internet you add to that carbon footprint.”

According to PrintCity, the report is intended to help printers reduce their environmental impact. But Kuhn said the aim ultimately was to actually reduce greenhouse emissions from the industry, not calculate the impact and offset.

The PrintCity Alliance is a cross-industry group that includes equipment, paper and software vendors such as Manroland, Fujifilm, Océ and UPM.

Read the original article at www.printweek.com.

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