A collaboration between 13 founding partner organisations and backed by 3 leading trade member associations, has culminated in the development of a Sustainable Print Manifesto.
The Sustainable Print Manifesto lays out a set of nine practical, non-competitive principles which ‘focus on real-world actions that improve environmental performance today, which any organisation can adopt immediately, without large investment or radical operational change’.
Carlos Lahoz, representing HP one of the founding partners, says: “We believe in the value of print and the positive impact it has in the world, but we also recognise that there is still plenty of room for improvement and collaboration is key. This commitment to collaborating to help achieve common goals, to accelerate innovations and progress, is echoed by those who stand with us on the development of this unified sustainability framework.”
The project is grounded in the belief that the print industry must collaborate more, in an environment where too many sustainability efforts remain fragmented, shaped by local regulation, technology limitations, individual company priorities, or regional nuances. The new Sustainable Print Manifesto aims to rise above these silos, offering a globally relevant blueprint for continual improvement, shared learning, and improved collective progress.
The manifesto’s purpose is to create a shared language for sustainable print. One that demystifies complexity and empowers every print business to take meaningful action to be more sustainable. The Manifesto has no single author: it has been shaped collaboratively through 11 working-group meetings, a multi-stakeholder summit in Valencia, a series of webinars, and multiple in-depth articles. Over the past 12 months, printers, manufacturers, brands, retailers, technologists, consultants, and trade bodies have contributed insight, challenged assumptions, and co-authored a document designed to unify the industry around clear, actionable sustainability principles.
Grounded in lifecycle thinking, the 9 guiding principles of the Sustainable Print Manifesto are:
- designing print for purpose;
- producing efficiently;
- choosing better, lower-impact materials and inks;
- minimising waste;
- reducing carbon and energy consumption;
- improving water stewardship;
- applying finishing only where it adds value;
- recycling and reusing operational materials; and
- communicating impacts transparently, using accurate, data-led reporting.
The manifesto is now available for download here and all organisations within the print and packaging value chain are invited to read it and share it, action its suggestions and even pledge their support. The ambition is to create a global community committed to learning, acting, and helping each other advance sustainable practice While this document will continue to evolve as the collaboration grows, today it marks a collective commitment from across the industry to create a clearer, more coherent and more impactful pathway towards a sustainable future for print.
The founding partners of this manifesto are: HP, CarbonQuota, Gallus, Domino Printing Sciences, FuturePrint, Sun Chemical, Nazdar, Kavalan, io.tt, CPI Books, The PackScout, CIMPRESS, and Bespoke; and it is backing by three key global trade bodies in the BPIF & IPIA (UK), VIGC (Belgium), and PRINTING United Alliance (USA).
