Given the recent popularity of e-books and Kindle-type devices, print enthusiasts must confront the environmental impacts of the publishing industry if they are to remain dedicated advocates of old fashioned, tangible books. Print on Demand (POD), a digital printing technology that creates a complete book – printed and bound – in less than 4 minutes, is certainly an exciting alternative, particularly at smaller, independent presses like Ooligan.
POD makes it cost effective and simple to produce short runs of books (or even just one) at a time when small publishers can’t justify the high production and storage costs of a large print run. POD trades minimal startup costs for lower per-book profits (since digitally printed books have a higher individual production cost than larger scale print runs).
How can POD help Ooligan become more environmentally responsible?
First, it eliminates the need for warehouses stocked with oversupplies, and there is no shipping of books to bookstores to sit on shelves that don’t sell, drastically reducing the carbon emissions from this practice. Beyond this, there are a lot of responsible decisions that can be made along the way. Xerox offers non-toxic Emulsion Aggregation (EA) toner that is manufactured using 25 – 35% less energy/pound than conventional toner and uses less toner laydown per page, requiring less printer cartridge replacements and producing less waste. Another eco-friendly alternative to petroleum-based toner is soy-based toner, which can be broken down into clean paper pulp more easily in the process of de-inking, increasing recyclability.
Using recycled paper (preferably 100%) and recycling all left-over scraps from the trimming and waste paper drastically prevents thousands of gallons of wastewater, hundreds of pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent, and pounds of Chemical Oxygen Demand.
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