Page 36 - Print21 magazine Sep-Oct 2022

Wide Format: Materials
Printing sustainable
wide format
Customers are increasingly demanding environmental credentials
from their suppliers, which means wide-format print businesses need environmentally friendly media. Industry suppliers are stepping up to the plate, and releasing a slew of sustainable product. Wayne Robinson reports.
The outdoor media industry is moving toward carbon neutrality this year,
with the Outdoor Media Association (OMA)
working with its members to achieve the Climate Action certificate.
The outdoor industry is set
to calculate the carbon output
of outdoor campaigns, and give advertisers the chance to offset and reduce the carbon impact of their media spend.
And OMA wants carbon neutral
to be just the first step on the road
to the ultimate destination of net zero. Carbon neutral means that companies can buy carbon offsets
to compensate for their greenhouse gas emissions, while net zero means they manufacture without any carbon emissions. Julie Jensen, marketing director at the OMA says, “It will be up to individual suppliers, including print businesses, to reduce and ultimately eliminate their carbon footprint.”
As well as the imperative from OMA, sign and display printers
are facing increasingly significant demands from their customers, particularly government, corporate and agency clients, to demonstrate
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their sustainability, as those customers have to report their own diminishing environmental footprint.
So, what can print businesses do? Well plenty, from installing solar panels to power the plant, to using rainwater for the plumbing, and crucially, sourcing environmentally friendly materials. PVC, a
mainstay of the industry, is coming under increasing scrutiny for its environmental issues, which are
not good. PVC is a cheap, stable, available, printable material. Those benefits, though, are now no longer enough, as green compliance tops the agenda. Alternatives are now appearing, as media manufacturers realise they have to provide what the market demands, and if they don’t they will be left behind.
And it is not only media manufacturers that are developing innovative solutions, printers themselves are working overtime to put themselves at the forefront of the environmental race. Notable among them is Cactus Imaging, which has developed its Smartskin media for billboard printing, as an alternative to PVC.
SmartSkin
Cactus says that SmartSkin “sets a new benchmark” for the Out of Home industry, with both the substrate and mounting ropes being 100 per cent recyclable, while also maintaining the high quality of traditional billboards, and being cost effective.
Once the print campaign has finished the new SmartSkin, and
its mounting ropes, can be recycled into park benches, decking, bollards, fence posts, and other high grade recycled polymer products.
Nigel Spicer, general manager at Cactus Imaging – now owned by
Eco-friendly for challenging environments: Shark Skin
Dispa from HVG: indoor and outdoor sustainable material
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36 Print21 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2022