Is there such a thing as green marketing when so much marketing is still in printed form? Yes, actually, green marketing can exist. More and more environmentally friendly inks and papers are being made all the time.

People might think that going all electronic all the time is one answer to greener marketing practices with e-newsletters, marketing emails and other electronic forms of marketing, but the carbon footprint of keeping up this constant access 24/7 isn’t doesn’t make it much better, if at all better, than green printing methods.

Richard Romano went into greater detail about electronic newspapers versus print newspapers in his blog post “How Green is my Media” on Expert Business Source. Romano cites some studies conducted by the Institute for Future Studies and Technology Assessment (IZT) of Berlin, Germany, which found that the electronic newspapers have a bigger environmental impact than print newspapers. The studies found that “the environmental impact of the hardware required (that is, mobile devices) is much less than with conventional PCs or laptops, but the energy consumption that individual data transmission requires for the energy-hungry UMTS network more than compensates for the energy savings from end devices.”

It boils down to using paper versus using energy. The argument that electronic newspapers are more harmful to the environment stems from the fact that fossil fuels that create energy are not renewable, while paper (trees) is renewable.

Although these studies were about newspapers, they can be adapted to any kind of printed medium, including marketing materials.

So how can we print more environmentally friendly marketing materials? By using sustainable paper and good-for-the-environment inks.

Sustainable paper
Eco-friendly papers are recycled, processed without chlorine, are synthetic or are made from renewable fibers other than trees (like bananas and lemons!). Neenah Paper has an Environment line of paper and a Green Paper line as well as an environmental savings calculator so you can see how many resources you save by choosing green paper. You can get synthetic-free papers from companies like Polyart and Yupo. There are also companies that only product sustainable paper, like EcoPaper, which uses recycled paper fibers and fibers from bananas, coffee and cigars.

Sustainable ink
Traditional printing inks contain volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that are thought to produce health problems and are known to produce air pollution. Alternatives include soy ink and waterless printing.

Soy ink uses a soy base instead of a petroleum base like traditional ink. Soy has much lower levels of VOCs so it doesn’t create as much pollution as petroleum-based ink. Paper printed with soy ink is easier to recycle because the ink comes off the paper more easily. Soy ink is brighter than regular ink as well.

Waterless printing is an offset printing process that doesn’t use water to dampen the ink like in traditional printing. Not only is water saved, but VOCs are eliminated in the printing process. The waterless printing process removes the need for solvent-based press solutions and blanket wash solutions, which are typically where all the VOCs come from.

These are just a few choices in sustainable ink and paper options. More and more are being discovered and hopefully soon, all printing can be less harmful to the environment.