Seacourt & Revive

Seacourt is the world's first zero waste printing company. The printing industry is the 1/6 worst polluting and the 1/5 most used/important industry. Instead of paragraphing my notes I'll write them down exactly how they appear in my sketchbook.

• waterless printing company
• originally had "as long as it's in a bin it's sorted" attitude
• 6 x 5m3 bins of waste each week
• 306 bins per annum, straight to landfill
• "jumped in the bins and found bags full of paper"
• Used to use chemicals to break down the water molecules
• 1997= waterless offset
• 1999= 2nd printer worldwide to be EMA's, environmentally acredited
• balance ink & water or it damages the image
• 2007= carbon  neutral, recycled paper, vegetable inks only 
• 2003= 100% renewable energy (solar panel)
• awarded wildlife trusts biodiversity benchmark
• winner of the Oxfordshire sustainable awards
• 2007= winner Queens award for sustainable awards
• Their water useage is less than an average family home
• 4 wormeries were then installed
• 2009= 1st printer in the world to send 0% waste to landfill
• Printing on bamboo fibre

  Revive    

• 5, 000, 000 tons of paper based waste
• Scandinavia= virgin paper
• recycled paper= France, Italy, Germany
• paper can only be recycled 4 or 5 times then the fibres become too short
• said fibres can then be used in insulation, cat litter.
• However recycled paper OBVIOUSLY needs some new virgin paper for new fibre
• " at the point of design; what will become of this after use?"
• "don't be ashamed of using paper, be ashamed of  waste"
• "without failure there is no success"    

After listening to Mark from Seacourt I realised that the company uses recycling as a gimic to aid their success. It made me think; say if recycling stop beings 'quirky' and becomes the 'norm'? surely they'd find another route to go down as they like being different? Mark continuously expressed that Seacourt is full of businessmen and NOT environmentalists. Which slightly aggrivated me as it meant they cared more about money than the environment,which sort of contradicted what their company stood for. I'm sure they'd get a lot less business if they went with a true slogan, such as; "Without the threat of climate change, there'd be no Seacourt.We'd have no gimic. Thank the environmental crisis"

However, I can understand that to stand out in the business world you need to be different. To offer things other businesses cannot. In Seacourt's case it's having 0% waste sent to landfill. It can also be argued that as long as they are having minimal negative impact on the environment, who cares what the underlying reason is? 

(Pages 13-16 in journal)