Environmental Health & Safety Conference Increases Attendance in 2008

The keynote presentation by Mark DiVito, “The State of Sustainability in Graphic Communications,” was based on a survey by Reed Business Information. This survey identified how different printing stakeholders are addressing green issues. The results included:
• Companies that felt the emphasis on sustainability in printing had increased in the past year: 75 percent.
• Companies with a formal, written policy on sustainability: 14 percent of printers responded that they had such a policy; 25 percent said they had an informal, unwritten policy; 40 percent had no policy; 21 percent had one under development.
• The survey showed that, at present, leaders in sustainability tend to (1) be larger organizations with more than 250 employees, (2) be represented by higher percentages of publication printers, wide-web flexography, prepress providers, and screen printers, and (3) make equipment and consumable purchases with sustainability in mind.