Sustainability conversations in wide-format usually start with hardware and consumables: latex and UV LED inks, lower-energy curing, PVC-free and recyclable media. Those choices matter. But some of the biggest and cheapest gains sit in the workflow, and they are often overlooked because they do not come with a spec sheet.
In a recent WhatTheyThink piece, Karen Kimerer of Keypoint Intelligence notes that over half of print service providers now see sustainability as a crucial factor in their business and purchasing decisions. Alongside greener inks and media, the article highlights efficient workflows as a key part of the response: print on demand, ganging and nesting jobs, and automating production to reduce overproduction and maximise material use.
Sell it as efficiency, because that is what it is
Pat McGrew and Ryan McAbee make a useful point in a separate WhatTheyThink article: sustainability lands better when it is framed as an efficiency story rather than a moral obligation. The levers printers already care about, such as makeready, spoilage, substrates, inventory, freight, energy and consumables, are environmental wins and margin wins at the same time. That lets you sell the work twice: to your finance director as a cost saving, and to customers as a credible, quantified claim. Their caveat is the important one. The numbers have to be real.
In wide-format, most of those levers are controlled by workflow decisions made before anything is printed.
Five workflow levers that cut waste in wide-format
1. Nesting and ganging
Media is usually the largest consumable cost in wide-format, and unused roll or board is pure waste. Automated nesting packs shapes tightly across the media width and gangs jobs that share a substrate, instead of an operator laying out each job by eye. We explain how this works in imposition and ganging automation and look at the wide-format tools in wide-format and print-and-cut automation.
2. Catching bad files before they are printed
Every reprint caused by a low-resolution image, missing bleed or wrong size doubles the media, ink and energy for that job. Automated preflight on arrival catches these problems when the fix costs nothing. See what PDF preflight automation is and, for a very current example, Canva PDFs failing at the RIP.
3. Colour that is right first time
Test prints, colour matching across different printers and rejected panels all burn media. Consistent, automated colour management across devices reduces the number of proofs and reprints needed to hit a target. Our guide to ColorLogic covers how that is done in practice.
4. Print on demand instead of print and store
Overproduction is waste with a delay. When customers can order exactly what they need through a storefront connected to production, there is less printing to stock, less storage and less disposal of out-of-date material. Web-to-print integration is what makes short, frequent runs economical.
5. Batching by substrate
Every media change takes time and often wastes material while the printer and cutter are set up. Grouping jobs by substrate and finishing route, automatically, means fewer changeovers and less setup waste. That depends on job data flowing cleanly from the MIS, which we cover in connecting your MIS to production.
Make the numbers real
Customers are rightly sceptical of vague environmental claims, and in the UK the Competition and Markets Authority's Green Claims Code sets out how claims must be truthful, clear and substantiated. The good news is that a well-automated workflow produces the evidence as a by-product. Track, per job:
- media used against media charged, so nesting efficiency is visible;
- preflight failures and how they were resolved;
- reprints, with a coded reason;
- changeovers per shift.
Those figures give you a baseline, show the improvement, and support any claim you make to customers. They also feed directly into the cost case, which our workflow automation ROI guide walks through.
Where to start
New inks and media will keep improving, and they are worth evaluating. But for most wide-format businesses, the quickest route to a smaller footprint and a better margin is to stop wasting material on bad files, loose layouts and overproduction. That is a workflow project, not a capital purchase.
If you want to know how much waste your current workflow is creating, a workflow audit will show you where it is, or you can contact us directly.
// how we can help
We follow real jobs through your business and give you a costed, prioritised automation roadmap you keep.
Sources: Improving Sustainability in Wide-Format Printing by Karen Kimerer, Keypoint Intelligence (WhatTheyThink); Green That Pays: The Efficiency Story You Can Actually Sell by Pat McGrew and Ryan McAbee (WhatTheyThink); Green Claims Code (CMA).