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Think outside the box
Europoint Display, a subsidiary of The Paper Company, has launched an initiative to encourage high street retailers and supermarkets to print their signage, packaging and displays on environmentally friendly substrates.
The scheme includes a boxed swatch of alternative media, supported by a PC-based calculator to assess the environmental impact of substrates and an environmental report. This will be presented to designers, corporate print buyers and printers to foster debate throughout the procurement and production chain.
Each box contains products for banners, self-adhesives for windows and films designed to replace PVC-based products as well as less harmful versions of existing products, such as a foam PVC substrate made from recycled polymer. Each box will also include an environmental report, Plastics in the Environment, produced by Europoint's environmental solutions director, Vic Adie. Finally, the environmental calculator ranks materials on the impact they have throughout their lifecycle and gives users an overall rating for each one.
Adie explained: "Retailers are keen to reduce their impact on the environment, however there is confusion regarding relative environmental merits of new substrates. For example, if a company wants to avoid contributing to landfill, which substrates are most appropriate? Or, if they want to minimise the amount of energy, and therefore carbon, needed to produce or recycle a particular material, which one should they choose? It's a complex area, which is why we want to encourage debate.
"We are currently working on a project for one of the biggest names in retail, which could replace 500 tonnes a year of a PVC-based product with a more environmentally friendly alternative. This means that PaperCo can support retailers as they switch to less harmful plastic and then move away from plastics altogether. Sending materials to landfill is getting expensive, so apart from the environmental arguments there are sound business reasons driving this trend."
http://www.europointdisplay.co.uk/
