we are green

Providing Earth-friendly printing for our clients.

At PrintSmart.co, we make environmentally responsible printing practices a critical element in design and production. When we must use “virgin fiber,” we buy paper only from paper manufacturers who harvest materials from well-managed tree farms.

We use soy-based ink on all of our paper-based print projects, and we use Aqueous and UV coatings with very low levels of VOCs. As we develop our clients’ print projects, we work with them to choose papers manufactured with little or no chlorine and made from high levels of post-consumer paper pulp content. We especially advocate earth-friendly materials and printing processes when we feel confident they will produce better print results at less cost.

You may feel confident that we:

Know our “green alphabet.” We especially pay attention to PCF, TCF and ECF labels which indicate how much chlorine went into manufacturing different kinds of paper: “CF” always means “chlorine-free,” “P” indicates the paper contains no processed chlorine, “E” means paper is free of “elemental” chlorine, and “T” is the best, signifying “totally chlorine-free.”

Like new and use pulp-free products. Several new paper products deliver great results with little or no environmental harm and with lower costs than traditional pulp products. We like “Denim Blues,” paper made entirely from recycled blue jeans. We have discovered that paper made from hemp looks elegant as cotton with far greater durability at far lower cost, and we have enjoyed good results from several synthetic papers. We are especially intrigued with a paper-like
product made from ground rocks: “TerraSkin” prints like coated sheets and resists fading, bleeding, and tearing like FedEx envelopes do. Better still, non-toxic, waterproof TerraSkin uses less ink than conventional paper products.

We comply with print industry standards. The federal government demands that printers use 30 percent post-consumer content paper in all of its large projects, and most of the Fortune 500 corporations have established similar standards. Therefore, even as we encourage clients to examine all their options, PrintSmart.co has set the 30 percent rule as its own standard in printing.

We maintain a green office. We have reduced our own paper consumption, producing paperless statements and recycling nearly 100 percent of the paper we use. Our concern for eco-friendly papers extends to our selection of coffee filters and our aversion to paper towels and napkins. We also have reduced our energy consumption, switching to low-energy lighting and conscientiously turning off all of our office machines when they are not in use.

As in our homes, so in our office: Our earth-friendly initiatives typically save money while they are saving the planet. Because we save on paper materials and printing production costs, we create opportunities for our clients to develop more ambitious, more creative, or larger projects without stretching their printing budgets.