Even as going green gains traction in the U.S., newspapers in Europe are already fully committed to reducing environmental impacts.

“Environmental awareness and practices will play a major role in our activities in the coming years,” said Reiner Mittelbach, chief executive officer of Ifra.

It is not always necessary to make major investments to realize environmental measures. Ecological and economical objectives can go hand in hand, especially when newspapers consider reducing power consumption, increasing solvent recovery or cutting total ink application.


 

Newsprint

Paper has the greatest influence on a newspaper’s ecological balance sheet, as its energy-intensive manufacture is included in the calculation. Paper certified as originating from a sustainable forestry (FSC, PEFC and other labels) is attracting a lot of attention.

Florian Nehm, right, sustainability officer at Axel Springer,
with a forestry worker in the Novogorod region of Russia.
 

Getting newsprint from a sustainable forest means, among other things, that only as much wood is cut down that can grow back; uncontrolled deforestation and the use of pesticides are prohibited.

Other factors also play a part, such as the energy efficiency of the mill, the transport distance and the entire logistical chain.

So is recycled paper perhaps the better alternative? “From the ecological point of view, recycled paper is certainly a good thing,” said Dirk Jepsen, an adviser with German environmental consultancy Okopol.

That is true especially if the paper contains a high share of recovered waste paper and comes from the region (due to the lower CO2 load from transport). Whether or not a bit more tree felling (cutting down trees to produce certified paper from virgin fibers) or more emissions into water and the air (such as the result from recycling waste paper) is ecologically justifiable “cannot seriously be weighed one against the other,” he said.



CTP plates and process

The ideal situation would be for newspapers to eliminate printing plates altogether, or at least to re-image them again and again instead of recycling them. But for newspapers today, digital printing and computer-to-press technologies remain impractical alternatives.

Instead, vendors and newspapers are evaluating chemical-free and reduced-chemical printing plate technologies.

 

Printing press and process

Countless possibilities exist for environmental improvements in relation to the press. The areas of materials and energy present the core opportunities here. Newspaper rotary presses designed in accordance with the latest technical standards were developed from the beginning with material and energy efficiency in mind and are therefore always superior to older presses.

Thus, vendors are employing technologies such as digital inking and tools that automate formerly manual processes to reduce energy consumption.

At the same time, suppliers such as Goss International Corp. and Koenig & Bauer have rolled out compact-design presses, which allow newspapers to install them in smaller buildings that require less energy to heat and air-condition.

Main-Post in Wurzburg, Germany, for example, said the power needed to run its KBA Commander CT compact press is 15 percent less than what’s required to operate its legacy Commander machine. And since the compact press operates without gear oil, Main-Post is able to reduce the amount of oil it needs by more than 1,000 liters annually, according to Andreas Kunzemann, technical manager (see Newspapers & Technology, November 2007).

At Badische Zeitung in Frieburg, Germany, the publisher saves more than 700,000 liters of water and 22,000 liters of dampening solution annually by using a KBA Cortina waterless press, said Patrick Zurcher, plant manager.

Triplewide configurations can also save energy, according to MAN Roland. The vendor said Germany’s Augsburger Allgemeine was able to lower energy consumption by 15 percent since going on-edition with a ColorMAN XXL press three years ago.

 

Energy management

In the area of supply engineering — heating, cooling, lighting and compressed air — consumption can be influenced positively by employing such tools as intelligent standby switches and production-dependent temperature systems.

At Axel Springer’s Spandau, Germany, printing plant, energy consumption dropped by half over the past decade simply by deploying more sophisticated energy management systems, said Karsten Koeppe, head of supply engineering.

Although most publishers can’t install a solar heating system or a wind turbine, newspapers can investigate the possibility of switching from a conventional power supplier to one that ecologically generates electricity.

 

Different standards

Newspapers in other parts of the world are also examining their environmental practices. New Express in south India, for example, uses 90 percent recovered paper, protects resources as much as it can and does not wrap its papers in plastic.

But it also plants trees around its printing plant, said Krishnamurthy Nandakumar, responsible for technology at the newspaper group. It also uses treated wastewater to irrigate its landscaping and it’s also studying whether it should construct a wind energy plant to power the plant.

In the United States, Cox Enterprises retooled its fleet of vehicles to be low-emission and has also purchased a number of hybrid vehicles as well as cars and trucks that can be run either on E85 or bio diesel.