Environment
MODERNISTIC BY NAME…
…AND BY THE NATURE OF ITS LEADING-EDGE SUSTAINABILITY PLAN. CAN YOU LEARN FROM THIS US-BASED COMPANY’S APPROACH TO GREENING UP YOUR BUSINESS?
Have you got a sustainability policy you can show clients? Hopefully, but, be brutally honest with yourself, is it as comprehensive, detailed and clear as the 47-page report published by Modernistic, a digital wide-format printer in Stillwater Minnesota? Modernistic belongs to the Sustainable Green Printing
Partnership, as does digital wide-format printer Yunker in nearby Wisconsin and which is doing many good things for the environment - for example, by joining a scheme to help employees and their families recycle household plastic, rather than let it go to landfill - but the latter has a sustainability policy that is essentially a statement of principles, not buttressed by much supporting evidence about achievements, targets and goals. Many wide-format print companies are positioned
somewhere between these extremes - as indeed are print buyers. Some customers are satisfied with a single page statement like Yunker’s, others want to drill down deeper. It partly depends on which demographic clients are targeting: a recent survey by consultants McKinsey found, for example, that 88% of Gen Z consumers do not trust company eco- friendly claims. (Spoiler alert: the phrase ‘eco-friendly’ now sounds dangerously like greenwash.) If you want to get ahead of the curve, you could do worse than download Modernistic’s report from its website, which leaves no ‘i’ undotted and no ‘t’ uncrossed. It kicks off with a stirring quote from co-CEO James Schulte: “You don’t lead in sustainability by telling others where to go. You lead by example, make a case for it, and help others along the way.” (To add context, Schulte is the third generation to lead the family business, which was founded in 1938.) And the company sets an example with the sheer volume of detail it shares. The past achievements are impressive - reducing water usage by 40% over three years, energy usage by 45% in the past year and emissions from its transport fleet by 95% over a two-year period, while also achieving 100% on-site waste separation. (It has also taken the radical step of disbanding its own fleet, relying on local vendors, suppliers and customers.) Modernistic has striven to innovate, developing a recyclable, PVC-free, magnetic receptive material (which is also more cost effective than traditional substrates), experimented with cooling controls on its presses and designed bespoke packaging to make delivery (which accounts for 20% of its emissions) more efficient - for the company and the environment. It also educates 8,000 opinion leaders, including many clients, with a monthly email outlining such developments as new sustainable materials. Equally striking is management’s willingness to look beyond its operations by, among other things, offering free printing to local non-profit organisations. Many corporate sustainability reports degenerate into a kind of extended humble brag - ‘We know we could do
THE COMPANY SETS AN EXAMPLE WITH THE SHEER VOLUME OF DETAIL IT SHARES
better but we have done A, B and C’. What sets Modernistic apart is the depth of detail provided (each of the stats cited above are presented as highlights but put into context with supporting text), the breadth of its vision (with a succinct explanation of its environmental philosophy) and its stated, audacious ambitions. The company’s 10-year-climate change road map has the usual targets relating to energy, water, recycling and emissions but they are almost always spelled out. By 2030, for example, it pledges to achieve 50% resource recovery, use recycled material in 80% of its products, increase output of sustainable materials by 70% and halve the kWH generated for every dollar in sales. It has begun adopting a similarly hard-nosed approach to water, monitoring how many gallons it uses for every dollar in sales (it estimated this was 0.38 in 2022).
Even for a company as committed to the environment as
Modernistic, these goals sometimes conflict with business as usual. In 2022, it reported that its output of VOCs had more than doubled, probably because more jobs required conductive inking. Management has promised to reduce this to historic levels and then reduce it again. This candour infuses many of its blogs, with such titles as ‘17 Ties You’ve Been Told About Wide Format Screen Printing’ and ‘10 Tips To Save Money When Buying Fleet Graphics’. The one thing British businesses probably won’t want to emulate is the Minnesota company’s slogan - ‘A Better Way Every Day’ sounds a bit Disney. But any provider of wide- format print services determined to make a step change on sustainability could learn an awful lot from Modernistic.
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