Australian Paper

After 28 years Finsbury printing went on a ‘low carb’ diet, added the weight of ‘green’ to its name, and set about building its brand. The journey has taken 10 years. Now it is emblematic of a sustainable business. Since then it has devoutly spread the green gospel. For the past six years the company has produced an audited sustainability report. It also produces a guide to every available green paper in Australia. Finsbury Green’s National Environmental and Technical Manager Rod Wade discusses its diet.

What are Finsbury Green’s environmental credentials?

It’s about the sum of its parts, it’s not one or two credentials. There’s all the certifications. The industry pioneering printing practices: no alcohol, and vegetable based inks. Our sustainability report remains the only legitimate sustainability report by any printing company in Australia. That is our sixth sustainability report. Our Green Paper Guide lists all the paper merchants and rates all the stocks on its green credentials. It provides background about sustainable paper, third-party certification and how paper is made.

A big focus has been about educating designers?

Rather than tell people how good we were, we’ve spent a lot of effort educating people about certifications, paper, environmental practice and the CO2 story. The last two years havebeen spent educating about how do you determine who is legitimate. There’s a hell of a lot of greenwashing out there.

How do you determine who is legitimate?

We’ve developed the Finsbury Green Green Star Rating system, a questionnaire on our website. Designers confused by hype can say to a printer, ‘Fill out this questionnaire and then I can make a better informed choice on who I want to work with’.

Is the Green Star Rating based on auditing procedures your company has gone through?

Correct. It covers waste management systems, carbon status, credentials and specific printing practice: do they use alcohol to make their plates, do they use vegetable inks. You can fill it out in 10 minutes and get a fairly accurate report on where they stand. It also gives a CO2 rating.

How important is third-party verification?

Absolutely important.

Which are the most important logos to look for in a supplier?

ISO14001 environmental management system at the very minimum. If you’ve gone that far, ISO 9001 (which is the quality management system) is also mandatory. FSC (Forest Stewardship Council certification) would be another mandatory certification, in terms of chain of custody papers. The next most important thing is for people to report on their CO2 footprint. Any business should be meeting those at a minimum before they even start talking about their ‘greenness’.

What are the benefits of being Australian made?

The trend 10 years ago was for a lot of magazine work to go offshore. That’s changing partly because of the lead times that are increased by printing offshore. The issue now is if we have some sort of carbon trading scheme in Australia, printing offshore will have to account for transportation and all the stuff that’s done there. That’s going to impact on decisions about the supply chain. But that’s less of a challenge compared to correcting the misconception that electronic communications are greenerthan print. There’s a lot of work being done to settle the factually incorrect myth that print has a bigger CO2 footprint than electronic.

Where is the biggest cost saver for you in going green?

Isopropyl alcohol is one of the key contributors to volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions, which is the biggest emission outside electricity from our industry. We’ve been alcohol free for four years.

What is your advice for designers wanting to be sustainable?

Take time to understand the new carbon economy and challenge yourselves and your studios to become low carb. Don’t engage in greenwashing. It is only through transparency and truthfulness that companies can avoid the accusations of greenwashing. You can’t put a lettuce in a butcher’s shop window and declare that you’ve become vegetarian. The more pressure designers put on all print providers, including the ‘green washers’ to improve their environmental practices, the better.

A small cardboard schoolhouse launched at the Royal Adelaide Show in 2009 has become a model for both sustainability and the work of sustainable communications consultancy Ecocreative.

The South Australian consultancy designed a package to link learning about sustainability with action in schools. The client was the state’s Department of Education and Children’s Services (DECS).

What set the package apart was an inventive way of using a potential off-cut from the presentation folders. Instead of discarding it, they used the excess to create a fun-to-assemble fold-up schoolhouse. Reinforcing sustainability concepts on a number of levels, the cardboard schoolhouse helped educate children on elements of sustainably designed buildings, including orientation and the placement of eaves.

“Since the die, stock and press-time were already being used for the presentation folders, this extremely successful piece didn’t involve additional costs or use of resources” says Project Manager Jamie Ackerman-Harvie.

Questioning the consequences of potential waste resulted in an inventive solution that supported the sustainable message of the entire package.

Since it began in 1998, Ecocreative has focused on reducing waste and specifying sustainable materials (including giving preference to Australian made products). “Part of the reason clients come to us is because we specialise in sustainable communications,” says Ackerman-Harvie. “So they are usually happy when we specify materials based on their environmental and social credentials. This also supports their procurement policies where they want every aspect of their supply chain to support their values.”

“An important aspect of [our commitment to sustainability] is favouring Australian products, services and materials,” says director Matthew Wright-Simon. “In particular, using resources from local recycling streams ensures that our recycling policy lives again as new products.”

The folder package is typical of that process. It was printed locally with soy-based inks on Australian made paper (made up of a mixture of post-consumer recycled content and FSC-certified virgin fibre from sustainably-managed forests).

“There are a lot of good reasons to buy Australian made,” says Ackerman-Harvie. “One is to limit kilometres that materials have to travel, which reduces the carbon footprint. Another is to support the local economy. It works well for us to work with local suppliers because we have personal relationships with them. We see them face-to-face and are able to check what’s coming off the press—the end result is a better quality and more sustainable product.”

Identifying a need can inspire invention. For Bluebag, a family-run catering company with city retail outlets, finding a sustainable alternative to the endless disposable coffee cups drove the development of the KeepCup.

With 100 million disposable cups sold each year in Australia alone, the KeepCup’s market potential was clear. But environmental benefits were also obvious: 17,000 trees could be saved and landfill could be spared 5,500 tonnes of disposable cups.

Bluebag commissioned industrial designers Cobalt Niche to develop the barista-standard cup and engaged Southwest Design to assist with the KeepCup’s naming, brand identity and website, which explains its easy operation.

Made from polypropylene #5, the KeepCup’s estimated lifespan is four years. Each KeepCup comes with an insulated silicon band available in various colours, which not only helps the user avoid hand burns, but also identifies their order – preventing mix-ups at the coffee machine.

With over 100,000 sold in its first six months and burgeoning international markets, the KeepCup has also been recognised in this year’s Victorian Premier’s Design Awards.

 It’s an ugly management term for a generously spirited idea: ‘thought leadership’.

Multidisciplinary design studio HASSELL has, for the past three years, been sharing its research – its ‘thought’ – beyond its 12 Australasian studios. Its research initiatives cover a spectrum of project scales and design inputs – from wayfinding to space planning, creating healthy indoor environments and environmentally sustainable design.

Whether ‘re-lifting’ buildings, researching double-skinned facades, or developing in-house tools for sustainable design and effective space planning, HASSELL shares its research and the processes behind its project outcomes with its peers and clients.

By appointing dedicated research roles and understanding the importance research plays in achieving good design, HASSELL has established a leadership position in the Australasian market. With a dozen studios around Australia, China, Singapore and Thailand and over 700 staff, HASSELL is one of the largest and most awarded architectural practices in the region. Its SA Water building in Adelaide and the ANZ Centre in Melbourne’s Docklands are – as AIA gold medal winner and HASSELL Chair Ken Maher describes – “demonstration projects for environmentally sustainable design.” The practice has a Sustainable Futures Unit (SFU) which advises each of its studios, working closely with local professional teams and ‘sustainability communities’. HASSELL also undertakes pro bono work for non-profit organisations as part of its commitment to social responsibility.

“All studios operate under the HASSELL environmental management system, and the responsibility for that rests with all staff,” says Suzette Jackson, senior associate and sustainability leader in the SFU at HASSELL. “The work we do at the unit is research, project-specific advice and management advice on sustainability objectives and initiatives. It’s about future thinking and thought leadership.”

But it’s not all one way. HASSELL, a founding member of the Green Building Council, also relies on international resources and research.

“Sourcing low-impact, eco-friendly material is much easier compared to 10 years ago,” says Jackson. “We use Ecospecifier (see View), GECA (Good Environmental Choice Australia), and other third-party organisations that certify products – for example sustainably managed and recycled timbers such as FSC certified products.”

“It is really important for us, and for clients to be able to demonstrate sustainability in the market place through independent and credible pathways,” says Jackson.”

www.hassell.com.au

Have you recently completed a project that showcases your sustainability efforts? Have you designed a job that minimises waste? Have you chosen a paper specifically for its environmental credentials? Are you turning off your computers and lights every night? Are your clients submitting briefs with an environmental flavour?

The sustainability category in this year’s Desktop Create Awards recognises excellent work that incorporates sustainable processes and practices. If you answered yes to the questions above, head online to www.createawards.com.au/sustainability and enter your business today! You could win $3,000 in cold hard cash, not to mention bragging rights.

It began as an alternative to virgin rainforest timbers that are commonly used for picture framing. But after casting moulds of frames in a variety of materials, Tony Knoll’s ‘eureka moment’ was to cast the entire frame and surface as one. The result is a new art medium, PanelPop, that has since developed into the sister product Photo Panel.

Suitable for pencil, charcoal, watercolours, oils and acrylics, photographs can also be printed directly onto the panel. The effect is a framed, non-reflective, glass-less image that’s lightweight and can be hung indoors or out. Using certain materials like charcoal and pigments, they can also be reused several times. The carbon neutral products are made from salvaged timber and Polystyrene packaging, a product that’s difficult to recycle and normally ends up as landfill. “While old-school artists may be reluctant to try the new surface, younger people have that environmental concern in their DNA, so it’s easier to get them working with it,” Knoll says. Its potential applications are in school art rooms with limited resources, with street artists and as architectural panels, he says. Meanwhile, people are encouraged to use PanelPop HQ as a drop-off point for unwanted timber and polystyrene.

www.panelpop.com

It’s been 46 years since British graphic designer Ken Garland penned the impassioned First Things First manifesto. Its plea that designers’ skills be used for ‘worthwhile purposes’ enjoyed a brief burst of support – including a run in the Guardian newspaper – before it lapsed into countercultural obscurity. Three decades and an anti-globalisation movement later, however, the manifesto was updated in 2000 and signed by some of international graphic design’s biggest names. The call to balance profit making with social responsibility was as strong and idealistic as its predecessor.

But in the 10 years since that second manifesto, society has changed considerably. More than ever, consumers and companies are keenly aware of the ‘unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand[ing] our attention’, identified in that 2000 manifesto. Consumers and companies know too well the risks created by overconsumption and poor manufacturing practices, and the long-term consequences that jeopardising our planet’s fragile ecosystem will have for future generations.

Corporate Social Responsibility has become the model, if not the manifesto, among many of the most profitable companies and the triple bottom line of People, Planet and Profits, is the mantra they are expected to adhere to. Independent agencies like the Global Reporting Initiative help verify company processes, while stock markets have sustainability indices like the FTSE4 Good and the Dow Jones to track performance for ethical investors.

Companies that don’t adopt this approach or abuse consumer trust through ‘greenwashing’, do so at their own peril according to former Saatchi & Saatchi UK chairman and chief executive, Lee Daley. “Brands will not be able to opt out of this,” he told the Financial Times. “Companies which do not live by a green protocol will be financially damaged because consumers will punish them. In the longer term, I do not think they will survive.”

It follows, then, that there will eventually be greater expectations on designers to live up to that corporate policy.

“In the end, doing sustainable design doesn’t take more effort,” says David Berman, Canadian author of Do Good Design. “It’s probably going to save more money and, like all design problems, limitation drives really good solutions. You just need intent and skills and wisdom.” “Eco-design is just good design,” agrees Leyla Acaroglu, who runs a lifecycle assessment consultancy Eco Innovators, and wrote Design Victoria’s indispensable What is Eco-Design? guide.

She also believes designers have the opportunity to lead the way creatively. “There’s a lot of positive things about it, but we need to understand that we haven’t achieved our goals of being sustainable businesses,” she says.

As she outlines in the eco-design guide, designers can act on many levels from choosing papers taken from certified timbers that are processed without chlorine and made from post-consumer waste paper, to printing techniques that don’t impact negatively on the environment by using VOC-free inks. Just as proactively, they can create work that avoids excessive blank space, reduces size, and maximises paper use. That immediate ecological impact of production can extend to wider workplace practices: from low energy, water saving offices, to ensuring electronic waste like computers are handled responsibly. What the First Things First manifesto defined as a crisis of conscience has moved toward an environmental imperative for all of us – and an economic imperative for designers. If they don’t understand the consumer groundswell, and the imperatives of the client to satisfy that restructuring toward a triple bottom line, then designers may find themselves left out of the loop – and out of a job. “You either know how to design with sustainability or you’re not going to be in this business,” says Berman.

More worrying, perhaps, are the greater implications. As an old slogan intoned, there are no jobs on a dead planet.

“The first question we always ask is ‘Does it need packaging?’. The next is ‘What’s the minimum amount required?’.” Vince Frost is discussing his role as Creative Director of Woolworths South Africa. But, far from talking himself out of work, it’s branding like this that forms much of his design business, Frost Design.

Since starting his company in 1994, the British-born, Canadian-raised designer has established a list of international clients ranging from banks to charities. From its Sydney base, Frost Design produces everything from books to websites, interior fit-outs to wayfinding and brand identity. Proudly declaring his business as “one of the first design companies to be carbon neutral,” Frost says: “With every job we do, we make sure we don’t create waste or use virgin resources. On our print jobs we use soy inks that are chemical-free, and recyclable or sustainable paper. Internally we recycle waste and use green electricity. And we don’t work for unethical organisations that abuse the earth or are detrimental to people’s health – we recently turned down a big job for an ammunition supplier’s headquarters in Dubai,” he chuckles, incredulous that such clients exist beyond a punchline to a poor ‘green’ joke.

Eager to explore new arenas, his studio started an eco-fashion line using cotton made from bamboo. However, the work that most encapsulates its attitude, says Frost, is the guest-designed edition of Futu magazine: “The issue was on sustainability and we gave away 12 spreads to different charities that don’t have the money to promote themselves,” he explains. In keeping with the theme, not only did Frost introduce eco-friendly stock, but Futu is continuing to use it. Design as eco-wayfinding.

How you choose to serve your salt and pepper might not save the world immediately but over time small things make big differences. Discussion about sustainability has to start somewhere and what better conversation starters than Pepperino – a design initiative by Arte Veneta which aims to reduce their wastage by using their timber off cuts to produce quality chopping boards, grinders and bowls.

Having already contributed to the tasteful interiors of Melbourne restaurants such as Izakaya Den and more recently the Barbagallo Trattoria E Pizzeria, Arte Veneta use Pepperino to further apply their design skills to notonly the tables, but also to the things that go on top of them. Affectionately referred to as their ‘little brother’, the tone of the Pepperino brand may be playful but this hasn’t prevented it being taken seriously by restaurants such as Rockpool, Fifteen Melbourne, Enoteca Sileno and D.O.C.

Using French Walnut, Rare Macassar, Flamed Cyprus, English Oak and even Ancient Olive Tree, no two Pepperino products look the same. Simple designs bring out the true character of the wood and indirectly act as a reminder of the natural beauty that we are trying to protect in the first place.

www.pepperino.com.au

Joost Bakker is an artist who provokes questions about the way we (re)use the materials in our lives. Challenging notions of what sustainability can involve with beautiful, surprising and deceptively simple designs, his initial floral work for Melbourne restaurants and bars has led to everything from public installations to large housing solutions. After creating his Greenhouse restaurant in Melbourne’s Federation Square using completely recycled and sustainable materials (with a functioning roof garden), Bakker successfully replicated it in Perth to much excitement.

Bakker’s family migrated to Australia from Holland when he was nine years old, and has a long history of farming flowers. With his inventive eye for what others might term rubbish and a deep connection to the spaces in which we like to gather, Bakker is a natural fit for our social sustainability spotlight.

www.joost.com.au

www.greenhouseperth.com

Has your work always had a sustainable bent?

I’ve always found life in what other people see as waste. Once you’re interested, you start to get an understanding of how complex something like recycling actually is. Take the sticker on an apple. Making compost, I keep coming across these little stickers and thinking, ‘why couldn’t we use something that breaks down organically, instead of plastic?’ And I’ve always wondered why you’d buy flowers in Queensland and send them to Melbourne. It’s never made sense to me.

How did you go from working with flowers in small social spaces like restaurants and bars, to bigger work with other materials?

You do flowers in a restaurant and become friends with the people who own it, then they might ask for help with something else.

Is there an educational element to your work? 

I’m not into hammering things down people’s throats. I just do it, and if people like what I do, great – but it’s up to them to make change. And it is up to people, not government. People have to demand change. So I figure I won’t ram it down people’s throats, which means they might not pick up on some little details in my work. But I also like the idea that people who’ve been coming to Greenhouse for four months will suddenly notice something different.

Tell us about the Greenhouse in Perth.

It’s right in the heart of the city and will stay there for 10 years. We make everything there; yoghurt, fetta, jam; we’re milling our own wheat from a farm outside of Perth and making our own bread and pasta. It’s much busier than Melbourne and way beyond what we expected.

How do you feel about the response?

I’m shocked. As an artist I’m always doubtful people will appreciate an idea I have, but Perth must be ready for it. Somebody bought a piece at an exhibition back in 2002, and said, “I don’t like it, but I know I will. I know your stuff grows on me.” If you instantly love something, you can only grow to dislike it. If it slowly grows on you, I think you’ll have a better  appreciation of it.

Would you like to do more than simply make things?

I get asked to sit on panels and so on, but I’d rather keep doing stuff. I think that’s my role.

What are some of the problems thatcome up when businesses don’t take social sustainability into account?

A good example is the lack of focus on local communities. My daughter’s school is currently having an extension built. I pushed for them to use local builders, but they had to use governmentapproved contractors who ended up coming from the other side of the city.

If you had builders who live nearby working on this project, not only would you be reducing pollution and transport, they would take a lot more pride in theirwork than someone who’s more interested in finishing up in time to miss peak hour traffic.

Do you see business benefits from socially sustainable ideas?

Look at Greenhouse. If you run a business that sells food in Perth and you’re quiet, and you look across the road at a place that’s milling their own grain, growing their own vegetables, using cuts of meat that nobody normally wants and they’re busy, then you’d want to investigate.