Seacourt Environmental printing

Seacourt & the Environment

Seacourt’s Environmental and Ethical Credentials

We have an established reputation for being one of the world’s leading Waterless environmental printers. We hold:

• EMAS
• ISO14001
• CarbonNeutral ® status - The Carbon Neutral Company

Furthermore, all our business processes have been checked for sustainable routes:

• Green Energy UK: electricity from 100% renewable sources
• Vegetable oil-based inks
• We use recycled paper on virtually every job we produce
• Waste management – we recycle waste paper, plates, pallets, cardboard, ink and CDs
• CarbonNeutral® status enables us to stabilise our impact on any areas we cannot improve upon at present

Our belief in social responsibilities has led to:

• Regular donations to charities
• Participation in community programmes

Recent Awards:

• Working to ISO 12647 Colour Standard
• Winner: European EMAS Award 2008 (Small Organization category)
• Queen’s Award for Excellence: Sustainable Development 2007
• Green Champion (print & publicity) - Green Apple Environmental Awards 2006
• Finalist European Business Awards for the Environment 2006
• Winner Oxfordshire Business Award: Environment Category Year 2005
• Winner London Liveable City Award 2005: Contribution to Air Quality
• Winner SEEDA Sustainable Business of the Year 2004
• Winner Oxfordshire Sustainable Business of the Year 2004

Environmental Printing: Why Waterless Offset has a huge positive impact on the Environment

• The print industry is the 5^th largest and 6th worst polluting manufacturing industry in the UK
• By its nature printing it is an extremely resource intensive activity, consuming large quantities of fresh water, energy and forestry
• On average a UK printer is responsible for emitting 20 tonnes of VOC (volatile organic compounds) into the atmosphere every year. There are over 12,000 printers… A huge amount of VOCs from one industry in the UK alone
• VOCs along with NO_x (produced from burning fossil fuels for example car engines, coal burning and so on) are largely responsible for producing ground level ozone. Ground level ozone contributes to asthma (6 out of 10 children in the UK suffer from asthma or asthma related illnesses - the highest in the western world)
• Using a Waterless Offset printer will immediately reduce VOC emissions by over 98% and water consumption to a tiny fraction of that of conventional offset printers
• Due to the dense population of the UK, the Sudan has far more access per capita to drinking water than the residents of the south east of England
• Waterless Offset technology gives a far better quality of print than conventional methods, due to the fact that water is not used in the printing process, enabling brighter colours, sharper “dots” and much finer screen rulings
• Waterless Offset is the ultimate environmental offset printing process
• So there is simply no need to use a resource intensive and environmentally damaging process when there is a more sustainable and technologically better alternative available

Environmental initiatives at Seacourt

There are many initiatives that go on unseen at Seacourt that contribute significantly towards our goal of best environmental practice, for instance:

• First and foremost we have an excellent waste minimisation programme
• Run on 100% renewable electricity
• Recycle 100% of all waste paper, packaging materials, plates, inks and CDs
• We have reduced our diesel fleet of vehicles by 50%, further reducing our CO₂ emissions
• Seacourt is fitted with light sensors that ensure lights are used only when actually needed
• All office paper is recycled
• A toner cartridge recycling scheme for all printers, photocopiers and fax machines
• 50% of money raised through recycling paper is passed onto a local young people’s environmental group
• We offer our clients a CD recycling scheme, when we deliver to clients we also collect CDs + jewel cases for recycling