Diminishing landfill space, regulatory pressures and consumer awareness of waste management issues are all factors forcing newspapers to re-examine their waste management operations.

Like any modern manufacturing business in North America, newspaper publishers and media companies must continually reduce the amount of solid wastes they produce.

While the amount and types of waste produced by other industries deliver much more of a harmful impact to the environment, the publishing industry, to many observers, represents a big, fat easy target for environmentalists and legislators.  

In response, publishers do what they can to minimize waste, from encouraging readers to recycle their newspapers to incorporating more efficient production and postproduction systems.

Indeed, a solid waste reduction initiative, executed at the production source, can provide the following benefits:

-Reduce costs and increase savings by diverting solid wastes from landfill disposal to recycling.

-Reduce regulatory and compliance pressures on the individual company (as well as the industry as a whole).

-Increase staff morale, and by extension, productivity. Nobody wants to work for a polluter.

-Increase the environmental image of the company as well as of the publishing industry as a whole.

In Oregon, where environmental concerns reign supreme, the Statesman Journal in Salem recently purchased a small and easy-to-use commercial compacting machine to corral its waste, according to John Witherspoon, distribution center manager.

The machine replaced a complex bailer system, in the process saving space, staff hours and money, Witherspoon said.

“We placed (the compactor) right on the floor by the stitcher-trimmer, which allowed us to eliminate the considerable length of the vacuum system that used to haul the waste to the bailer one floor up,” he said.

The compactor allowed the Statesman Journal to not only minimize its waste but also permitted the newspaper to eliminate the need for a third person to monitor waste recovery at the bailer, Witherspoon said.

The waste management challenges faced by newspaper publishers are very industry-specific.

The industry generally contends with what has been described by experts as a “fairly inefficient” waste minimization process. It ends up taking way too much time and human labor to gather and crush the deluge of cardboard and paper trimmings, bundle them, then haul the bundles out to the Dumpsters, usually located in another part of the plant or facility.

Bottom line? Reducing the volume of the waste increases productivity.

Donald Meis is president of KenBay LLC in Mendham, N.J., which distributes the Rotorpac waste compacting system.