A recent article published by eco-friendly networking website, izzitgreen.com conveys the softer (and greener) side of industry leader and eco-enthusiast, Grover Daniels.
Going green in a grey industry with Pixxlz.com and Grover Daniels.
You’ve got 5 seconds to name a “green” business. Did you name solar power company? An organic dairy? Chances are you didn’t name a printing company.
Grover Daniels, founder and CEO of eco-friendly printed products company Pixxlz.com, acknowledges that printing isn’t conventionally thought of as green industry. “The printing business is a difficult business to keep environmentally friendly. You would never create this business as a green business.”
But that’s just what Daniels did.
Printing is a shopping list for the eco-offense depot: VOCs, chemical solvents, heavy machinery, and massive amounts of paper.
Pixxlz.com , whose tagline is “we print green,” is trying to change that. But in an industry that is still scrambling to catch up with the digital revolution, it’s a mostly solitary battle for Daniels. It’s also a battle of endurance.
Green printing is an ongoing journey
“In the printing industry since Ben Franklin and Guttenberg, changes happen in large but slow chunks,” says Daniels. “In the old days it was a hand machine, then a letter press, and in the late 90s, with Bill Gates and Microsoft, and Steve Jobs attracting the designers to Apple computers, and Adobe, and the commercialization of the internet, all these things combed to change the printing industry forever.”
But change takes time due to the long life of printing equipment. “Presses last for 20-plus years. There is a large segment that will not change because their investment was made in that old equipment.” Daniels saw this as an opportunity. His “vision was to buy state of the art equipment that took advantage of all the new hardware and software,” introduced by digital age.
Businesses are combinations of processes and products. For Daniels, this distinction is essential to Pixxlz.com. He notes, “We had to redefine a category from buying ‘printing’ to buying a ‘printed product.’ I wanted to build a noun company and not a verb company.” This allowed Daniels to influence the definition of a printed product and redefine both the process and the product.
And here’s where we find the happy accident in this story.
Digital paves the way to green
Grover Daniels admits, “We didn’t go green by design, but by going digital.”
He came up with the idea by looking at how people integrate their social lives with the internet. “Imagine a college student taking a picture at a basketball game, tagging it on Facebook, then being able to download it and print a poster.” It was an immediate success.
As it turns out, “when you commit to go digital in our business, you commit to be friendly to the environment.” With conventional printing, designs and proofs are created and reviewed on paper. With digital printing, the process is paperless up until the product is printed. The digital equipment proved to be sustainable in other ways, with reusable film that could be sent back to the manufacturer and waste-free printing plates.
But Pixxlz.com didn’t stop there. Once Daniels saw that digital presses are “the most environmentally friendly ones made,” he starting looking for ways to make the entire process more eco-friendly. Pixxlz.com began using recycled paper, soy and water based ink, and non-toxic cleaning solvents.
But if you really wanted to be green, shouldn’t you just not print at all?
Unlike the Flintstones, who make do with chiseling into stone, we use paper and printed products every day.
A quick inventory of my desk finds no fewer than 36 printed items, most paper, and most made by a commercial printer. Printed products are everywhere, serving to integrate our digital and physical lives.
But in the future, will we give up paper altogether; and if we do, will it ultimately be greener?
In Environmental Science & Technology, Erika Engelhaupt navigates the life cycle analysis of e-books, computers, and printed texts. She reports that “reading online for 30 minutes [on a desktop] has the same overall effect as reading a print newspaper.” In terms of toxins, “reading a web-based newspaper for 30 minutes or more created the most potential toxic harm to humans and marine ecosystems…For freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems, print newspapers had the most toxic impact.”
Matters of pixels and paper aren’t always simple.
Just follow the green light home
Is it the environmental or digital side that drives customers to Pixxlz.com ? Daniels replies, “I think it was because we’re digital and [my sister] Jennie thinks it’s because of our [environmental practices].” Jennie inspired Daniels to start thinking about the environment. “It took a family member to get me to do something. I was impressed with Gore’s movie. He’s absolutely right saying the world has a fever. He gave me the big picture, then Jennie looked me in the eye and said, ‘let’s make this commitment, and see where it goes.’”
At the recent Down:2:Earth expo, Daniels met a former bicycle racer who is helping with Boston’s bicycle awareness campaign through bicyclebenefits.org. The meeting motivated him to “move environmental awareness into Copy Cop,” which is owned by the parent company of Pixxlz.com . He says, “We decided to make a bold move and do 50% off on all orders when someone rides a bike in, gives us a job, and then leaves on their bike.”
Daniels has taken some of his sustainable business practices home. “My kids are 21 and 17 and they are totally committed to the environment. We’re doing this for them.” The one thing he couldn’t do is give up his car. “I might give it up for a day, or a week, but that would be it.” He is, however, conserving water by turning off his sprinkler. His “grass is much browner this year than last year. Brown is beautiful. I’m also more aware of the AC and heating. I’m always a little warmer or cooler than I hope to be.”
How does Grover Daniels feel about the word “green”? He thinks it won’t ever go out of style: “Who is tired of saying ‘I want a Coke’, or ‘I want a Diet Coke?’ ‘Green’ can be a noun, a verb, anything. What’s better than a word that morphs? I’m not tired of it. I just got into it.”
About IzzitGreen.com
IzzitGreen.com is a new networking site that inspires discussion and change where you live, work, and shop by asking “Is It Good?” and “Is It Green?” IzzitGreen.com users rate and review the businesses they visit everyday and influence change in their communities toward a more sustainable future. IzzitGreen is born from Boston locals Peter Hughes and Tom Permatteo who brought their professional tech start-up expertise to a personal pursuit; helping drive the adoption of sustainable ideas and business practices to everyday people. IzzitGreen.com launched in Boston on May 24th, and will target metro areas nationwide in an effort to influence better, greener business practices and to inspire the smaller green steps that individual consumers can take everyday.
For more information, log on to www.IzzitGreen.com, or contact Izzit marketing director Jimmy Blakeney, at 336-314-3600 or jimmy@izzitgreen.com.
