I think Kermit the Frog said it best: “It's not easy being green”. And that's especially true of the print industry. At Venture Banners, we've always looked at various ways to reduce our carbon footprint, and the trouble is, when you start doing your homework, most of these green schemes and new materials seem to do more harm than good.
A perfect example of this is something that was being touted a few years ago:
‘Completely Recyclable Banner Material'. Sounds great, right? The trouble with this was that the end user had to send the banner back to the supplier when they had finished with it, and then the supplier needed to store all the returns until they had a full container load. Only at that point was it all then sent back to China for it to be recycled.
It didn't take a genius to work out that this wasn't sustainable and you would end up with a carbon footprint like Godzilla's, not to mention the fact that that much PVC could be recycled here. How do you think they make traffic cones, or sleeping policemen?
For years, we at Venture Banners have been waiting patiently for something to come along that: A) worked and B) didn't cost three times as much as the standard PVC materials, because everyone wants to be greener.
Solar Panels
In the meantime, we made some changes at the factory to increase our green credentials. Firstly, we installed a massive 50kW Solar Photovoltaic System (that's 180 solar panels to you and me). Our Solar Farm has been in operation since October 2018 and I can honestly say after my initial scepticism, it's incredible (read my blog post ‘Here Comes The Sun'). It generates over a quarter of our annual electricity usage and with energy prices having reached ‘silly status' in 2022, I can see that investment showing a return sooner rather than later.
Packaging
And then we set our sights on our packaging. We use a LOT of bubble wrap. To be fair, we have to with foamboard panels because there's no better, safer or more cost-effective way of sending them with couriers (though we do utilise waste foamboard to create the clever ‘suspension corner protectors' that we use within that packaging).
What we did, however, was target the way we send smaller banners, of which we do thousands. Instead of rolling them around a core and then bubble wrapping them, we are now sending them in boxes.
We bought a cardboard shredder so that our waste cardboard could be shredded and reused as filler for the banner boxes rather than throwing it in the bin. This has reduced our plastic bubble wrap usage by 30%.
I also read (from reuseabox.co.uk) that reusing just one tonne of cardboard saves five trees! So this process is sustainable and has the added benefit of reducing our overall waste.
Whilst we were on a roll, we also decided to change our waste management company to one that sends just 10% of their collected waste to landfill.
PVC-Free Banner
PVC-Free Banner material was released a couple of years ago, and it sounded great; banner material that you could responsibly put into landfill and that didn't release harmful bioaccumulative toxins like mercury, dioxins, and furans as it breaks down.
However, some of the first ones were horrible. We heard stories of ink falling off the material, apparently welding the hems was a major issue and the material in general was so tissue paper-thin that it was only going to last five minutes outside.
Eventually, the initial teething issues were resolved and we have chosen what we think is the best of the PVC-Free materials to offer you. This includes our Roller Banner range now available with PVC-Free material as an option.
The standard banner and mesh banner materials are ever so slightly more expensive than their PVC-based counterparts because the raw material is more expensive, however the Roller Banner Range with PVC-Free graphic is offered at the same price as the standard material!
There are still some limitations with PVC-Free, regardless of what other companies tell you. You'll struggle to high-frequency weld the material, so you can't have pole pockets. We talked to a company whose PVC-Free banners all fell onto their stand at the NEC as their pole pockets failed one-by-one.
However, in true Venture form, we waited and (hopefully) have done it properly with quality materials we have researched and rigorously tested, so you and your customers don't have to suffer that embarrassment.
After all, none of us want to look like Muppets, do we?
Request a PVC Free Sample Pack
To see the quality of our new PVC-Free range of materials, request a free sample pack.