After a fantastic response to the initial campaign, which saw FESPA UK & Prismm Environmental asking for printers to register their interest in sending their waste PVC Banner and Polypropylene to be recycled rather than sending it to landfill or incineration, the team are ready to move forward to the next stage.
After contacting all the printers who registered for the initial project and discussing their waste management needs, it became clear very quickly that a large amount of printers have smaller amounts of the low-grade plastics to dispose of in a cost effective way. This is mainly because, to send waste to recyclers a printer needs to have a good amount of material to make it beneficial for everyone involved.
Having realised this, Jon Hutton (Prismm) and Suzi Wilkinson (FESPA UK) agreed that the possible solution was to try and group printers in a local area together with one disposal point that they can all use and create a localised infrastructure to dispose of the waste as a collective group.
This, however, comes with its challenges. The first is finding a local printer or supplier with big enough premises to house a bailer, the second is the sorting of the materials and how time consuming this can be. The third is logistically how to collect or transport the materials from each printer to a central location.
Jon Hutton started to investigate the possibility of boxes or bags being used to collect the waste from each printer making it easier to transport to the central drop off point. From this idea came the offer of help from Mark Mashiter from Soyang Europe.
As a supplier of a variety substrates Mark and his team wanted to help the printers he works with, and he offered to trial a Take Back system. If he had an empty wagon coming back from a printer who had waste material to collect, he would collect the waste, no matter which supplier had provided the substate and he would take it back to his yard and bail it and store it ready for collection.
Soyang wanted no payment for doing this and have had a bailer and cage system installed at their premise just so they can help the printers who want to recycle, do so.
Mark Mashiter from Soyang commented:
“ We are currently offering a collection service to customers whereby our own transport delivers new materials and collects waste. It is returned to Soyang Europe acting as a central collection point. We are just trying to give customers a solution to a problem”.
After several successful collections from Soyang, FESPA UK & Prismm are now urging other Print service providers who have the correct waste transfer notes and have a license to carry waste to get in touch and help to support the printers they work with, to dispose of their waste responsibly.
Suzi Wilkinson from FESPA UK said:
“This has been a time-consuming project for everyone involved so far, but making a change has never been easy, and now more than ever as an industry we have to pull together and overcome the challenges printers face when trying to do the right thing. Hard work never killed anyone and the time for talking about it has passed, we need to roll up our sleeves and solve this problem as one industry, and I believe that FESPA UK and Prismm can make an actual difference to this problem if we all work together. If anyone supplier or printer wants to get involved with this project, please register at waste management registration.“
The Future of Print event at Hatfield House, 10th March will be a chance to find out more about the project so far and to have your say as to how we move forward. Register for your place here.
