Like most sectors, a lot of focus is put on environmentally sound business practices for the printing industry. Environmental printing (or green printing) may seem against your best interest, but when you're hosting web-to-print or database publishing services for your customers, you are following this strategy anyway. So why not make use of it in your own marketing communication?
Web2print / Printing on demand
Web2print and printing on demand applications make sure that the printed matter that is ordered, is actually needed at that time. Business cards are only ordered when needed, and product brochures are not put into huge stocks. The resulting paper gain can have a measurable effect on your green printing efforts.
Database Publishing
Once you have database publishing software that is capable of creating highly personalized catalogs, combined with state of the art digital printing technologies, you can offer a new type of catalog to your customers. Rather than creating a single catalog at the beginning of the year, you are able to create them as needed. And even more: the content of the catalog can be fine-tuned to the intended audience. A combination we see regularly is the creation of catalogs with full information about the products that are sold by a certain dealer, and more limited infrmation for the other product lines. The environment will thank you for the difference!
Soft Proofing
Online technologies make it possible to do a lot of soft proofing online, nowadays. This may not completely remove the relevance of hard copy proofs, but it will most definitely mean that less of them are needed. By the time a print needs to be made, most (or all) of the other errors have been removed allready. And less prints means greener printing.
Prepress workflows
The optimization of your prepress workflows (with DMP FLO Suite or with Enfocus Switch) can also result in a serious reduction in prints. Preflight checks and other tools result in more optimized files (and less errors) in the rest of the workflow. Another argument for your environmentally sound, green printing techniques!