Heidelberg Druckmaschinen AG has become an associate member of the not-for-profit research initiative, which works with the global graphic arts community — printers, manufacturers, print buyers and publishers — to evaluate the carbon footprints of different media.  Heidelberg joins a number of other leading manufacturers which are backing Verdigris, including Agfa, Efi, HP, Ricoh and Xeikon, as well as the Drupa, Fespa and EcoPrint Europe exhibitions.

Explaining Heidelberg’s decision, Harald Woerner, the company’s Product Manager, Environment and Sustainability, praises Verdigris’s “precise and efficient communication” of the respective environmental impacts of different communications media.  “At Heidelberg we regard sustainability as a long-term balance between environmental protection, business goals and social responsibility.  We invest heavily to eliminate or minimise negative impacts throughout the life cycle of our products, from manufacture through use by customers to final recycling or disposal, and we look forward to sharing our expertise with Verdigris and our fellow project supporters.  Verdigris deserves credit for its efforts so far to create and maintain a valuable cooperative effort by the graphic arts industry to discover and present the facts about print’s sustainability.”

“Making the case for Verdigris to the global leader in press technology is a major achievement for us,” says Verdigris founder Laurel Brunner.  “Anyone who visited Heidelberg’s exhibit at Drupa earlier this year witnessed how seriously the company takes sustainability.  As well as the entire stand being carbon-neutral, Heidelberg showed a number of innovations such as in-press energy efficiency monitoring and heat recovery during drying.  We were also impressed by the launch of consultancy services to help Heidelberg customers improve and reduce their energy consumption.  Heidelberg’s participation is great news for Verdigris.”

Since its launch at Drupa in 2008 Verdigris has mobilised the resources of its supporters to educate producers and consumers of print about its environmental impact, helping to raise print’s profile as a competitive communications medium that is also sustainable and has a low carbon impact.  Verdigris achieves this by providing a global network of graphic arts industry publishers with free research and content – independently managed by specialists in print technology – that explores and analyses the issues facing publishers and printers and helps them manage their carbon footprints while continuing to run profitable businesses.  Verdigris is also a major contributor to the development of ISO 16759, the standard for measuring the carbon footprint of print media products.

More information about Verdigris can be found on the project’s website – www.verdigrisproject.com.  This provides access to Verdigris data and information about other environmental developments, as well as links to other useful environmental websites and a growing list of the world’s printers compliant to ISO 14001, the environmental management standard.