Widthwise 2024


Environmental outlook Data analysis:


The lessons you’ve learned in the past could be why your business fails the test of time – unless you question your mindset.


Q24. Do you think the world can avoid catastrophic climate change?


Yes No


Don’t know 23% Q25. What is your company’s top environmental priority over the next two years?


Reduce/recycle in-house waste Reduce your energy consumption Measure/reduce your carbon footprint


Offer more recycled/recyclable print solutions Generate more energy in-house (install solar panels etc)


in Davos this January: “Te truth is that this planet will continue to orbit the sun for millions of years aſter we have gone.” What is really at stake is whether we protect our one - and, for the foreseeable future, only - home, or continue to wreck it. And on that issue, the jury is still out. Tat uncertainty is reflected in the 2024 Widthwise survey in which 39% of British wide-format printers said we can avoid catastrophic climate change but 38% believed we can’t. Tat finding is worrying but hardly


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surprising. Te urgent optimism of Cop 26 in Glasgow in October/November 2021, which prompted a flurry of net zero by 2050 pledges from governments and businesses, has certainly faded. Some of the wide-format print industry’s custom- ers - most notably FMCG giant Unilever - have backtracked on sustainability while


ustainability is not about saving Earth, it is about saving ourselves. As Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy, said at the World Economic Forum


9% 4%


other companies have pressed on but, out of political considerations (especially in America), stopped talking about their pro- grammes, a trend known as ‘greenhush’. Tis might suggest, as nearly four out of


ten wide-format printers believe, that we have lost the fight against global warming and what Hayhoe calls ‘global weirding’, the rise in extreme weather phenomena, such as lethal heat waves in Greece, devastat-


Some of the


wide-format print industry’s customers have back-tracked on sustainability.


ing floods in Bangladesh and prolonged droughts in South Africa. All that said, we must take heart, she suggests, from the progress we have already made: “A decade ago, the world was set to warm by


26 | Widthwise 2024 | www.imagereports.co.uk


as much as 5C by the end of this century. Now thanks to a broad range of policies we have managed to reduce that to 2.5-2.9C.” Urgent action is still required if we are to avoid dangerously interfering with Earth’s climate system but that reduction does at least prove we can make a difference. On an issue as complex as environmental


sustainability, it can be hard to ascertain what’s really happening on the ground - which is why surveys like Widthwise, which dig deeper than anecdotal evidence and isolated news stories, are so useful. What is clear is that 60% of the poll’s print service providers said that being seen as environmentally friendly is more important than a year ago, while 30% said it remains as high a priority as ever. Te findings also indicate that many printers are acting out of enlightened self-interest rather than being prompted by their clients: 69% said that few customers checked their environmental credentials, 12% reported that the issue was never broached and 16% said they were asked about half the time. But are print buyers willing to put their money where their conscience is and pay


39% 31% 17%


39% 38%


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