Soar Print recently won the Medium Business category at theSustainable 60 Awards while almost simultaneously becoming the first New Zealand printer to have its printed products and services certified carbon-neutral.
Having achieved certification as an organisation under the carboNZero programme two years ago, the company has continued to strive for ever-higher sustainability standards, explains Soar financial director Jenny Carter.
“The first step was to become a carbon-neutral organisation,” Carter told Printers Post. “This means measuring our carbon emissions in the first instance -- we have to set in a plan to reduce them to as close to zero as possible and for the bits left over we buy approved carbon offsets.
“The next step was to offer carbon-neutral products and services. For that we work out the carbon emissions in the printed product or service itself. As an organisation it is mainly power, fuel, waste, transport and air conditioning. But in the product or service you look at all of the raw materials that go into it and the design -- so if someone is flying around the country putting together artwork or taking pictures for a magazine you have to include those as well. We have a calculator we can then put that info in and it comes up with our carbon footprint.”
Carter says the savings of committing to the programme “far outweigh” any costs. “You measure quite closely what your emissions are and you put a plan in place to reduce -- and that reduction drives the change in your business. We’ve just had a relaunch of our recycling programme to try and reduce our landfill and have had an energy audit and so now have the lights off in the office -- we don’t need them being a quite well lit office, but if you didn’t have that focus you wouldn’t think of it.
“We do have customers approach us because they know we are leading the way in our industry. There is a benefit there. I think it is also just something we want to do as an organisation, something we decided to do a while ago.”
The Eden Terrace Auckland-based firm was delighted to also be recognised by the Sustainable 60 Awards, where Soar competed alongside many big-name corporations.
“You have to enter all five categories to be eligible to be a winner in your sized business. We were a finalist in three of those categories and then we went into the overall winners finals, Carter explained. “It was very exciting for us, we are delighted with it. It is more than being green and environmental. We have won a few green awards, but this is about being a total overall sustainable business. It is not just looking at the environmental aspects, it is about looking at strategy and governance -- how you run your business.”