The Business Case for Sustainability: What Brands Really Want

According to Alliance Insight’s (formerly NAPCO Research) “2023 Who Buys Wide-format Display Graphics: How, from Whom, and Why,” 49% of sign and display graphics providers offer eco-friendly options. The same report found 62% of print buyers identified sustainable production processes as an important consideration when selecting a wide-format print service provider (PSP).

Clearly, sustainability is popular on both sides of a transaction, but one thing these numbers don’t tell us is the financial impact on PSPs. To learn more, Wide-format Impressions spoke with Gary Jones, vice president of environmental, health, and safety affairs at PRINTING United Alliance, and two PSPs with firsthand experience implementing sustainability measures in their wide-format operations.

Crafting the Sustainability Narrative

Sustainability is an all-encompassing process. It’s not just about the media you print on, or the inks you use to do it (although those are part of the equation).

“The concept of sustainability is mutually inclusive of business,” Jones says. “A lot of people think of it as separate — ‘oh, it’s just sustainability,’ and they think about the substrate of the finished product — but we want to change that mindset because it’s mutually inclusive of running your business. People that are running their business in an efficient, smart manner — they’re doing it in a sustainable fashion, they just don’t call it that, or don’t recognize that as sustainability.”

Following that line of thought, the manufacturing process — including everything from energy consumption and employee commutes to end-product transportation and how old equipment is handled when it’s being replaced — is critical to sustainable practices.

“Most of our sustainability initiatives are global, in that we try and source the most responsible materials in the first place,” says Melissa Koke, president of Springfield, Oregon-based QSL Print Communications. “And then we also buy green power; we reuse whenever we can. We are very specific about how we lay jobs out to prevent waste.”

Koke adds that QSL, a PRINTING United Alliance member, tries to make sustainability second nature for those on the production floor by placing bins earmarked for disposing of different materials throughout the facility, including wood, toner cartridges, paper, and metal. The company aims to keep as much of those materials as possible out of landfills.

Don’t Discount Material Selection

Of course, the most obvious opportunity for wide-format PSPs to embrace eco-friendly practices is in the selection of media, inks, and technologies. At Orlando, Florida-based SunDance, there are three criteria for investing in a sustainable material or other technology: performance, scalability, and customer impact.

SunDance employees gather for a group photo during a community cleanup event. Credit: SunDance

While in an ideal world you could simply opt for the most sustainable media out there, JohnHenry Ruggieri, president of SunDance, explains that application has a significant impact on the material you’re able to use.

“Part of the challenge becomes the print spec,” Ruggieri says. “Somebody asks for a foam PVC sign … and you now offer them something that is sustainable that would be fine for an indoor event, and you don’t know that it’s for an outdoor event. Now, all of a sudden, we’re on the hook — for lack of a better term — for suggesting to that client that they move to a different material.”

Ruggieri adds that keeping everything from media to ink boxes out of landfills is a big part of SunDance’s sustainability efforts. In fact, SunDance even works with a local company that collects qualifying wide-format sheets and scraps and converts them into a renewable energy source.

Certified Sustainable

A good way for PSPs to start pursuing sustainability is to get certified. For instance, SunDance became the first offset printer in Florida to gain Sustainable Green Printing Partnership (SGP) certification, approximately 15 years ago. The company has maintained the certification every year since.
Meanwhile, QSL has a certification from local nonprofit BRING, which goes to Lane County, Oregon, businesses and measures the sustainability efforts at their operations.

“It’s just a commitment that we’ve made, and it’s not always about the bottom line — but often it is — but it also is our responsibility to the next generations to leave it better than we found it,” Koke says.

What Print Buyers Want

Jones says certification can also help attract and retain customers, to whom sustainability is increasingly important.

“I think it can help [PSPs] get more business, and it can help them maintain existing business,” he says. “There’s a certain segment of the customer base that is seeking and requiring certifications — or requiring reporting of their supply chain — because they’ve made commitments publicly. And then to some extent, there’s some legislative and legal motivators relative to sustainability that are driving changes for PSPs and their customers. As a result of that, you have a whole stratification of customers. You have some that are saying, ‘Look, we only want to do business with companies that are dedicated to tracking and reporting on their sustainability initiatives or have become certified companies.’”

Because of this, Jones encourages leveraging those sustainability certifications and processes as a selling point.

In terms of the end product, Koke has seen great customer demand for sustainable options. For instance, the company used to offer a banner material made of PET, and highlighted that offering in a blog post. Koke says QSL still gets calls asking for the now discontinued product and is in search of a suitable replacement.

Despite the demand for sustainable products and processes, however, some print buyers may be scared off by the price associated with them.

“Those materials are often more expensive, and so for the most part, people who are committed to that, they’ll pay what it takes to have post-consumer waste content,” Koke says, “but certainly sometimes it’s a barrier to proceeding with the more sustainable choice. We do take that into consideration when we build our pricing so that the sustainable options are in the ballpark.”

Even if customers don’t go with a sustainable media options, having a holistic approach to sustainability can help you keep their business.

“It’s rare to find a company today that doesn’t have some type of core value around sustainability,” says Kandi Johansmeyer, senior vice president of sales and marketing at SunDance. “But that does come with a price, and oftentimes clients say one thing and then do another because there’s the cost involved. But when they decide to still work with us, they at least can lean into the other things that we’re doing from a process standpoint, like the recycling and those types of things that still give them a story to tell, even though maybe they selected the cheaper product, not the sustainable product.”

It’s not always clear-cut whether print buyers choose one PSP over a competitor based on sustainability and pricing. As Johansmeyer notes, it’s not a decision that can be easily tracked and measured.
Ruggieri explains, “When it comes down to ordering, if somebody is underbidding us and they may not be doing the same things we are environmentally, alot of times, [the customer goes] with that other person.”

Nonetheless, some customers will tell you directly that sustainability had a huge influence on their decision to work with you. Johansmeyer recalls one customer purchasing for a trade show a couple years ago that specifically wanted a 100% sustainable option.

“We gave them exactly what they wanted, and then they turned around and asked us, ‘Hey, can you pick all of this up and recycle it for us in a way that we know is conscientious?’ And we said, ‘Sure, yeah, absolutely,’” Johansmeyer says.

The Power of Education

Finally, wide-format print buyers likely don’t have all the information on sustainable print options. That’s where PSPs must step in to educate customers about the environmental impacts of the different solutions. For example, Koke says people will often ask for foam core boards for events, but QSL will try to redirect them to more sustainable options, like 100% paper-based signage products.

“There’s some education on the sales side of what’s available, and we try and steer people toward materials that are recyclable and/or made from post-consumer waste instead of plastic when we can,” she says.

So, what’s the bottom line (pun intended) for how sustainability in wide-format printing affects business?

“What I can say is companies that focus on the manufacturing aspects of their operation — they save money,” Jones says. “Ultimately, they’re able to save money. They’re able to save resources. If you cut your energy consumption by 10-20%, that’s going to your bottom line. So, there are values and benefits associated with sustainability. When you get into the product itself and the substrate, the most common complaint I hear is that the more sustainable substrates can cost more money, and a customer doesn’t want to pay for it. However, depending upon your customer and circumstances, they may be willing to pay that differential. That gets into the individual relationship you have with your customers, and what they are willing to spend.”