Screen Printing - October/November 2019 - 19

Rosacci holds the shop's CGD certification with Emily Backus, sustainability advisor
for the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment.

no volatile organic compounds (VOCs). They suggest optional
strategies including blending waste ink to create a "house black"
for internal reuse.
Rosacci says he appreciated that the city coached his
company through the certification process and helped him
see opportunities for improvement, such as packaging. His
facility was going through hundreds of boxes of polyethylene
(poly) bags per week for mailing shirts. They began buying
supplies from EcoEnclose in Louisville, Colorado. EcoEnclose's poly bags are made from 100-percent recycled content
and come with a dual adhesive strip that allows them to be
reused for customer returns.
Although CGD certification is free, meeting some of the
standards required expenses that Rosacci wasn't able to immediately justify. For example, replacing all the T-12 fluorescent
bulbs in his warehouse with LED bulbs would have cost more
than $50,000. Instead of replacing them all at once, he elected
to replace a few per week. Other changes were easier to
implement right away, such as training employees to shut off
hot presses when they aren't using them.
Rosacci says he's proud to have achieved CGD certification
and appreciates being a member of a community of like-minded
businesses. "We've been able to build relationships that we
wouldn't have otherwise," he says. Rosacci hopes that other
print shops will follow his lead in obtaining certification.
He's considering pursuing a state-level certification program
that is more robust than Denver's to further improve his
environmental performance.
Various cities and states provide similar local certifications.
Sustainability at Work in Portland, Oregon, has certified more
than a dozen Portland-based manufacturing companies along
with many nonprofits, architectural firms, and other businesses.

Companies in western Washington can apply for EnviroStars
certification through a program led by municipal governments
and utilities, including Seattle and other cities in the greater
Puget Sound area. Like the CGD program, requirements in
Portland and Washington are industry specific.
Local certification isn't available everywhere, though,
and for shops that operate facilities in several US states,
managing multiple certifications or differing standards
depending on location can be cumbersome. Such businesses
will probably want to start by making changes at their headquarters and also consider other certification options.

INDUSTRY CERTIFICATIONS
The Sustainable Green Printing Partnership (SGP), which
certifies the overall operations of a printing facility, is open to
shops located anywhere in the country. SGP calls itself
the "leading non-profit accreditation organization promoting
sustainability in all printing processes" and encourages
collaboration among printing shops, their customers, their
suppliers, and associations that provide education and
community outreach. To date, 53 printers in 20 states have
earned SGP certification. DPrint (mydprint.com) in Florida is
one of them.
Lisa Kaiser Hickey, DPrint chairman of the board, who
recently retired from her role as president and CEO, explains
the company's decision to become one of the first SGP-certified
printers in Florida. DPrint, then called Douglass Screen Printing,
was already committed to lean manufacturing as a way to control inventory and waste; pursuing SGP was a natural next step.
Hickey's decision was made easier by the need to satisfy the
requirement of one of DPrint's largest clients, the US Government
Publishing Office, which is an SGP-certified facility and gives SGP
OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2019

http://www.mydprint.com

Screen Printing - October/November 2019

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