Staining the Future

It’s easy to paint certain industries with a broad brush. I’m keen to slip out from beneath the one that’s swept across the printing trade in recent times.

Reams of paper, barrels of ink, the two coming together in a spectacular display of wastefulness and environmental irresponsibility. I’ll be the first to admit that the whole printing game doesn’t set a guy up to look like a hero. But once a bad scene does not ever a bad scene make. And an industry with a backwards way of doing things is the most responsive to a turnaround.

CJ Graphics is one of the most environmentally sensitive printers in the world.

Momentarily, we’ll have completed a project that’s seeing the erection of a couple of small windmills out front of our main facility. Working with Village Energy, we’re putting these windmills up to get the power necessary to operate all of the servers inside the shop.

In addition, we’re in the process of testing some inks that contain absolutely no volatile organic compounds. Currently, CJ uses soya-based inks, and these little pots of magic, with their low VOC content, are already better than lots of what’s out there. But the new inks will eliminate the bad stuff all together.

More and more, the paper we use is FSC certified. And we offer customers the option of waterless printing, and at the same price as conventional offset printing.

Waterless printing is a printing method that bypasses the traditional slop of chemicals that’s applied to a printing plate in favour of a printing process that relies on temperature control, instead. The elimination of these chemicals is not only more advantageous for the print quality it produces, but more environmentally kind, too, for the gallons of water it saves.

And there are other rewards associated with engaging in conscientious printing. CJ was just notified that it is one of seven Canadian printers, out of 5,000 entries worldwide, to win a Benny Award, this one for a job we printed for Mercedes Benz—waterlessly.