Heidelberg Steps Up its Environmental Commitment
December 2007
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A study by Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg) confirms that 40 percent of printshops place great value on environmental protection. “Our customers set great store by environmental protection,” confirms Dr. Jürgen Rautert, director for engineering and manufacturing at Heidelberg. “We can show that protecting the environment and earning money are not mutually exclusive. In fact, the investments required to secure a better future for our planet pay for themselves very quickly.”
Heidelberg made environmental protection one of its corporate objectives back in 1992. The company was the first to receive the industry’s eco-certificate for its foundry in Amstetten in 1996. Since then, environmental management systems compliant with EMAS and later ISO 14001 have been installed at all of Heidelberg’s development and production sites. Independent experts check each year whether the company’s facilities comply with the legal requirements and voluntary commitments.
“We aim to make printing more environmentally friendly and to ensure that the public is aware of this fact,” explains Rautert. “Having pursued an active policy of environmental protection for the past eleven years, our press production processes are already very environmentally friendly. However, the focus now is on minimizing the presses’ environmental impact when in use at customers’ sites. Therefore our developers are currently working on concepts that will keep environmental pollution in printshops to a bare minimum. Our Print Media Academy network also provides support for the implementation of appropriate production methods,” continues Rautert.
If customers implement all the measures suggested by Heidelberg for environmentally-friendly production, numerous reductions can be achieved. CO2 emissions generated by material consumption and printing processes can be reduced by over five percent, paper waste by up to eighty percent, energy consumption by over fifteen percent and waste by up to five percent. For the Speedmaster XL105-6+L, these reductions are equivalent to total annual savings of around EUR 210,000 ($302,295)—without even factoring into the calculation the savings made on the press through shorter makeready times.
The biggest environmental factor in sheetfed offset printing is startup waste—no other parameter has such a big impact on a press’s environmental performance. If we consider that 600 sheets of startup waste are created on average per job, a press in 3B format running in three-shift operation creates over 280 metric tons of waste a year. This corresponds to around 300 tons of CO2 emissions each year. The additional waste created in the postpress stage is not even factored into this equation.
Heidelberg made environmental protection one of its corporate objectives back in 1992. The company was the first to receive the industry’s eco-certificate for its foundry in Amstetten in 1996. Since then, environmental management systems compliant with EMAS and later ISO 14001 have been installed at all of Heidelberg’s development and production sites. Independent experts check each year whether the company’s facilities comply with the legal requirements and voluntary commitments.
“We aim to make printing more environmentally friendly and to ensure that the public is aware of this fact,” explains Rautert. “Having pursued an active policy of environmental protection for the past eleven years, our press production processes are already very environmentally friendly. However, the focus now is on minimizing the presses’ environmental impact when in use at customers’ sites. Therefore our developers are currently working on concepts that will keep environmental pollution in printshops to a bare minimum. Our Print Media Academy network also provides support for the implementation of appropriate production methods,” continues Rautert.
If customers implement all the measures suggested by Heidelberg for environmentally-friendly production, numerous reductions can be achieved. CO2 emissions generated by material consumption and printing processes can be reduced by over five percent, paper waste by up to eighty percent, energy consumption by over fifteen percent and waste by up to five percent. For the Speedmaster XL105-6+L, these reductions are equivalent to total annual savings of around EUR 210,000 ($302,295)—without even factoring into the calculation the savings made on the press through shorter makeready times.
The biggest environmental factor in sheetfed offset printing is startup waste—no other parameter has such a big impact on a press’s environmental performance. If we consider that 600 sheets of startup waste are created on average per job, a press in 3B format running in three-shift operation creates over 280 metric tons of waste a year. This corresponds to around 300 tons of CO2 emissions each year. The additional waste created in the postpress stage is not even factored into this equation.
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