Q&A with printer firm Brother
Ok – so printing doesn’t exactly have an environmental legacy, but every major printing firm is talking the talk on green street. But can they walk the walk?
Mike Dinsdale, Brother’s director for this sort of stuff explains:
Greenbang: What kind of car do you drive:
Mike Dinsdale: : The last car I had was a Mercedes E 320 CDI.
In our company car scheme we are capped by CO2 levels. We incentivise drivers to go below cap by offering to buy back the CO2 emissions at £20 per gram. This scheme has been running just over a year so we aren’t really seeing much of a trend yet but next year we will change many cars and will see how it works.
Personally I wanted to make an improvement over the cap and changed my car a year ago. I researched options like the Bio-Fuel SAAB etc. but because of fuel distribution limits this was not practical. Hybrids also didn’t seem to be the best option as recent tax allowances have confirmed.
So, I found the new 5 cylinder eco diesel engine from Alpha Romeo at 179 gM3 very attractive bringing me a reduction of almost 20% and a personal return at the end of lease of £820. At that time I also treated myself to a matching “bike in a bag” but confess I need to get out on this more often.
We change cars every three years. My aim is to reduce by around 20% every three years until it’s no longer practical. This means, technology permitting, I plan to cut my vehicle CO2 by 60% by 2013.
To what extent is the push to be green a marketing front for companies?
You are right to be suspicious! The cynics amongst us would say the whole sustainability argument is being exploited as the next big thing in marketing. However, to get it right is hard and it takes time. Brother began the process of achieving ISO 14001, the environmental quality system, in 1992. It took around 12 years for all our 18 factories to do it. Brother is still the only manufacturer to achieve the respected Standard TCO99 for our laser based products and we scored 100% in the latest Ethical Company survey.
Does this come down to convenience to be seen to be green and bigger budgets in corporate social responsibility?
Being responsible in business operations and business efficiency are one and the same thing. In almost every case, our efforts to minimise waste, reduce energy consumption, improve our supply chain, reduce packaging and build better products has resulted in an improvement in our business operations.
Brother has been making printing products for years – isn’t it hypocritical to suddenly say it is turning green?
No because we put our green approach into place 15 years ago! Printing technology is a demanded business function, today at least. It will change in the future and we will continue to be innovators in that change process. We have published example life cycle assessments – so our customers can make informed choices – and have also published technical papers on newly developed energy-saving technology; we hope to commercialise this within three years.
What work are you doing with parliament and what challenges does that pose?
The activity we’re involved in includes, amongst others, the All Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group and The AAPG for the environment. Engaging with authorities and policy makers at all levels is really helping us to understand the challenges we face as well as shaping our strategy.
