Page 39 - Widthwise Magazine

How many times has a hotel asked you to reuse your towels? It’s all in
a good cause of course. And which of us would spurn such a simple opportunity to protect
the planet? Yet it was hotel towels - and a note urging residents to reuse them - that inspired a young American research student called Jay Westerveld to coin
the term ‘greenwash’ in 1983. While in Fiji, he gate-crashed a sprawling beach resort in search of clean towels and saw the note. As he recalled: “It basically said that oceans and reefs are an important resource, that reusing the towels would reduce ecological damage and ended with something like ‘Help us to help our environment’.” Noticing how rapidly the resort was expanding - and how many new beach bungalows were being built - he concluded that the owners were more concerned about saving money than saving the environment. That is why he coined the term ‘greenwash’.
For too long, too many printers - and buyers of print - have been content to
do the minimum, their own equivalent of reusing towels. In fairness, this was partly down to ignorance. It was all too easy to take such terms as ‘recycling’ and ‘organic’ at face value. There was also a sense that sustainability was something that publicly quoted companies
talked about a lot - to reassure their stakeholders - but did not actually do very much about it. That began to change in the first decade of this century when such large retailers as Walmart, Marks
& Spencer and Tesco began radically transforming their businesses to reduce their carbon footprint. In the past couple of years, the annual Image Reports Widthwise survey has suggested that the wide-format sector has begun putting its house in order.
If anything, the 2020 survey suggests, print service providers are taking the future of the planet more seriously
than their customers. Three out of
four respondents said they already
have environmental accreditation - a significantly higher proportion than in 2019 - and 9.2% are working on it. In a striking, even puzzling contrast, 92.5% said that few or none of their customers ever asked about their accreditation or, for that matter, about their policies on sustainability. Even more perplexing is the finding that 80.7% of wide-format printers say it is more important to offer green options now than it was two years ago (compared to just 46.1% who felt so in 2019).
How to resolve these apparent contradictions? The first thing to say is that just because customers do not ask to see environmental accreditations does not necessarily mean they don’t care about sustainability. Under pressures
of time and resource, they may just assume their providers have the relevant credentials. It is also true, as many printers have lamented, that there has been a shift, across all sectors, towards younger, less experienced (and not at
all coincidentally cheaper) print buyers,
Q39. How important is it to offer ‘green’ print options? More important than 2 years ago
80.70%
Widthwise 2020
No shift - not important
No shift – important
Less important than 2 years ago
9.21%
7.46%
2.63%
Q40. Do clients ask for your environmental credentials or ask for your sustainability plans?
Few
None
Around 50/50 Most
63.16%
29.39% 4.82%
2.63%
www.imagereports.co.uk | Widthwise 2020 | 39