Environment
SAISAG MAY BE GONE, BUT ITS MESSAGE LIVES ON
IT WAS ALMOST ONE YEAR AGO THAT 13 COMPANIES BANDED TOGETHER UNDER ONE GROUP TO COMBAT THE WASTE CREATED IN THE SELF-ADHESIVE MARKET. NOW, SAISAG IS NO MORE AND INSTEAD, FESPA UK HAS TAKEN UP THE MANTLE. ASSISTANT EDITOR, BENJAMIN AUSTIN, REPORTS.
Sustainability is of growing concern across all formats of the print industry. There are almost as many ways of dealing with waste and products as companies are looking to help reduce it, with each one bringing its suggestions to the table. Almost one year ago, 13 businesses from the self-adhesive industry united under one body to create a cohesive strategy for combating excess waste. Labelled the Self-Adhesive Industry Sustainability Action Group (SAISAG), everyone signed agreed to share ideas for making the industry greener, all under the leadership of chair, Steve Lister. Almost simultaneously FESPA UK had also made changes to its Waste Accreditation project which it started two years prior. The scheme was set up in hopes of finding ways to recycle a range of materials used in the print, signage, and graphic business, and this year it added siliconised papers and self-adhesive vinyl to its list – similar to SAISAG’s intentions.
SUSTAINABILITY IS A JOURNEY, NOT A DESTINATION. WE’LL NEVER GET TO THE POINT WHERE WE HAVE ACHIEVED EVERYTHING BECAUSE THINGS ARE CONSTANTLY CHANGING
One year on and SAISAG is no more, with members opting to work with FESPA UK and its newly updated scheme. But what happened?
STARTING ON THE RIGHT FOOT At its conception, SAISAG had 13 founding members: Pyramid Display, Greens the Signmakers, 3M, Antalis, William Smith, Metamark, Avery Dennison, Arlon, Spandex, Contra Vision, RGVA, OPG, and Reconomy. In an update provided to FESPA UK in September, Steve
was quoted as saying: “We started SAISAG for a very particular reason. It had never been done before – we had never got this amount of competitors in a room to discuss anything – but we set out with the goal of sustainability. “We needed to do this because, to succeed
in anything to do with sustainability, you need to collaborate – no one can do it alone. “We found pockets of work being done within some of our founder members – 3M was looking at something, Metamark had set up its recycling scheme, and Avery Dennison was doing something else.” According to Steve, the start hit some reluctance
between businesses as they feared giving too much away to competitors, but slowly the group relaxed and started sharing ideas. “There were some massive positives but we realised people had different approaches. “For example, Metamark had its scheme already, so
they knew how difficult it was to collect face film; and backhaul it, so we decided to start looking at trials of collecting it,” he added.
FINDING THE RIGHT EXPERTS Soon the group started working with Jon Hutton from Reconomy, who was also a key member in creating FESPA UK’s waste project.
20 | December 2024/January 2025
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