Print, the sustainable media

Benjamin Franklin was the first to suggest the idea of Daylight Savings Time.

I am writing this on March 13, 2011, the day we “spring forward” into Daylight Savings Time (DST). With spring arriving presently, it is a good time to consider the ways that print media is contributing to environmental sustainability.

It is none other than American printer, inventor and statesmen Benjamin Franklin who is credited with the idea of saving daylight. It is believed that Franklin was first to suggest moving daylight hours to the end of the day between the vernal and autumnal equinoxes as a means of conserving resources. In a 1784 letter to the editor of the Journal of Paris, Franklin joked that if Parisians would break their habit of sleeping late and not seeing “any signs of sunshine before noon,” then the six hours of missed daylight in the morning could be used to replace six hours of candlelight in the evening.

As Franklin wrote, “I say it is impossible that so sensible a people, under such circumstances, should have lived so long by the smoky, unwholesome, and enormously expensive light of candles, if they had really known, that they might have had as much pure light of the sun for nothing.”

You can read the complete text of Franklin’s letter here: http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/franklin3.html.

The modern concept of sustainability is very similar to Franklin’s simple idea: it addresses the complex and long-term problems of environmental, economical and social well-being; it teaches that satisfying needs and managing resources in the present is also about ensuring the same for future generations.

In this respect, the paper and printing industries—as well as the consuming public—have made significant progress. Although we still have much work to do, we should use this occasion to celebrate print media as among the most sustainable communications, marketing and publishing choices of the day.

The following are some of our important green accomplishments:

  • Print helps to grow trees
    According to the USDA Forest Service, about 4 million trees are planted daily in the US, 1.7 million of that total by the wood and paper industries. Most paper now comes from sustainable forests. These forests are essentially “tree farms,” where trees are grown as a crop, just like broccoli or wheat. When these trees are harvested, new stocks are planted. Print on paper gives landowners a financial incentive to renew forests rather than convert them for other uses, such as agriculture or development.
  • Paper is a renewable resource
    One-third of the fiber used to make paper comes from wood chips and sawmill scraps; another third comes from recycled paper. Overall, in the United States nearly 80 percent of the almost 400 paper mills use recovered fiber to make some or all of their paper products, and of these, approximately 200 mills use recovered paper exclusively.

  • Post-consumer paper recycling is at record levels
    The American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA) reported that a record-high 63.4% of the paper consumed in the US was recovered for recycling in 2009. This exceeds the industry’s 60 percent recovery goal three years ahead of schedule. This is a tremendous achievement by the both the public and the paper recycling industries.
  • Print is often greener than electronic media
    All communications media leave a carbon footprint. Making a CD or DVD, both of which are difficult to recycle at best, generates around 300 to 350 grams of CO2 per copy, while printing a 100-page four-color annual report releases about 80 grams. Even Web-based communications have a carbon impact—both in terms of the electricity needed to power the computers involved and the metals, plastics and other materials that go into their construction.

It took about 135 years for Benjamin Franklin’s brilliant idea to be realized (DST was officially implemented in 1918 when Congress adopted “An Act to preserve daylight and provide standard time for the United States”). Obviously Congress did not heed Poor Richard’s dictum: “You may delay, but time will not.” We need not delay in promoting the uniquely sustainable qualities of print and paper-based media. Let’s start today!

Of tablets & printing

Not too long ago the word “tablet” likely conjured up an image of Charlton Heston in a scene from “The Ten Commandments.” This seems natural enough for graphic arts people, given that written communication—including modern printing processes—have their origin in ancient clay tablet writing that began 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia.

Thanks to Apple, however, the “tablet” has a new connotation; i.e. the iPad and other slate-type mobile computing devices. As with previous digital and online technologies, the modern-day tablet has major implications for print media. What is different this time is the pace of the tablet’s impact, especially on various forms of publishing.

By any measure, the iPad has been a huge success. Nearly 15 million iPads were sold in the eight months since Apple launched it, more than twice the most optimistic analyst predictions. To be fair, the excitement about tablets is also driven by Amazon’s Kindle—with some four million units sold since 2007—and the Google Android, Microsoft Windows Mobile and HP/Palm based systems coming online presently.

The success of tablet devices—along with smartphones—is due to several critical technologies:

  • Powerful and low-energy mobile processors
  • Faster and accessible wireless broadband
  • High resolution, multi-touch display

The third of these is the most recent and most important. The replacement of the physical keyboard and mouse with a high-resolution touch display is a major step forward in human/computer interface design; all you need to operate the system is your fingers!

But as interesting as technological innovation is, the true value of these changes is as much about content and media consumption as it is about the popularity of the platform.

This brings me to printing and publishing. In the past month, two significant things happened:

  • On January 27, Amazon announced it had sold more ebooks than paperbacks for the first time. For every 100 paperbacks it sold in the last quarter of 2010, Amazon sold 115 Kindle books. In their press statement, Amazon said, “Last July we announced that Kindle books had passed hardcovers and predicted that Kindle would surpass paperbacks in the second quarter of this year, so this milestone has come even sooner than we expected; and it’s on top of continued growth in paperback sales.”
  • On February 2, The Daily was launched by News Corp. as “the industry’s first national daily news publication created from the ground up for iPad” with a “unique mix of text, photography, audio, video, information graphics, touch interactivity and real-time data and social feeds.” During the press conference News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch said , “No paper. No multi-million dollar presses. No trucks. … We’re passing on these savings to the reader, which is why we can offer The Daily for just 14 cents a day.”

This shows the growing thirst of the public for reading on tablet devices. It also reveals how publishers are using mobile technologies as platforms for new business models. Clearly, printed books and newspapers will continue to exist. But I think we can all agree that the role of print within the publishing spectrum is being shifted and encroached upon by its electronic and multimedia cousins.

It is this new reality that both the providers of print products and services and the creators and publishers of content must adapt their businesses. The quicker we find our way to the unique role and value of the ink-on-paper component of content delivery, the better we will be at taking advantage of the opportunities emerging out of the new, cross-media landscape.

Print media & the Great Recession

I am not an economics expert. When I sit down to read the business news I usually go straight for the tech stuff like you probably do. However, now and again I take the time to read economic assessments and forecasts. It is important for all of us—regardless of where we are in the value chain of graphic communications—to try to understand the business climate and how it impacts our professional and personal lives.

Without getting lost in so many facts and figures, it goes without saying that you need an idea of which way the wind is blowing in the overall economy even if you are planning to buy the latest Internet-enabled 3D HDTV much less than make a capital improvement or hire new staff. This is especially true now with what appears to be the aftermath of the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

For these reasons, I welcomed the opportunity to read and comment on the recently published report from the Printing Industries of America “Moving Past the Great Recession: Print’s Recovery Path for 2011-2012 and Beyond.” The PIA’ s Economic and Market Research Department has done our community a huge service in providing a comprehensive outlook on the printing industry, its markets and technology segments.

The PIA document is broken up into four sections with each containing much that is valuable. I will highlight what I consider to be the most important aspects of each section and then finish with a summary and some conclusions of my own. You might want to go for that cup of coffee now before you read on, or you can just skip to the end.

The Economy: Recession and Recovery

The essential question here is: are we on our way up or down? Well, according to PIA, we’re actually moving sideways. The Great Recession was significant in terms of damage to the economy in comparison to the previous four recessions (1974-75, 1981-82, 1990-91 and 2000-2001). However, in contrast to these events—where the principle of “the steeper the decline, the stronger the recovery” prevailed—this recovery stalled following the fourth quarter of 2009 and not long after the recession was declared officially over (June 2009).

What this means is that much uncertainty continues. However, according to the report, “At this time, the most likely trajectory of the economy over the next two years is a somewhat stronger rebound with inflation-adjusted growth of 3.3 percent in 2011 and 3.5 percent in 2012. While this is not a robust recovery, at least it is improved from just a few months ago.”

Assessing the Damage: Print and the Great Recession

The printing industry took a significant hit during the crisis of 2007-2009. According to the PIA report, the Great Recession “shrunk print’s economic footprint by historic proportions last year” with 8 percent (2,943) of total printing plants closing and 15.6 percent ($25.9 billion) of total volume of printing falling between 2008 and 2009. The PIA’s caveat is that print remains a major part of the economy in spite of these declines.

In this section, the report makes some important observations about the different segments and technologies of the industry and the overall impact of the downturn on printing businesses:

  • Marketing and promotional printing is by far the largest component of our industry with 52.8 percent ($74.2 billion) of all shipments compared to informational and communications printing at 27.4 percent ($38.8 billion) and product logistics at 19.8 percent ($27.9 billion).
  • The category of “product logistics,” i.e. packaging, labels and product manuals, is the one print function that does not compete against other media (with the exception of manuals) and has a protected competitive position.
  • Digital printing grew throughout the downturn and projected to grow ahead of overall GDP, but this will come at the expense of the other categories of printing technology.
  • Profits for printing companies on average were -1.7 percent of sales in 2010 which was a decline from 2009 where profits were +1. 6 on average.

Print Market Outlook for 2011-2012

PIA projects that print markets will grow by 3 percent in the next two years based on the likely trajectory mentioned in the first section of the report. The report also predicts that the “shake out” of unviable enterprises and industry restructuring will continue. While this undoubtedly means more unemployed print company workers, the good news is that those firms that remain should see an increase in business volume.

The report refers to “survivors” as those companies that have made it through the storm and it predicts that we will see an overall growth of 12% for these firms. This is further broken down into 4% growth in conventional print, 16% growth in digital print and 16% growth in ancillary services. With printers’ profits generally lagging sales growth and the overall economy, PIA predicts that average profits will be 2 percent of sales during the next two years.

Different Paths: Printers Race for the Future

Here we get into the more challenging problems of the industry and our prospects for future success. Much of the material in this section is derived from a previously published PIA report called “Beyond the Horizon” (2009) and an upcoming book entitled “Competing for Print’s Thriving Future.” The main question here is this: how do move into the future and not just survive but thrive.

PIA puts printing companies into four broad categories each representing one quarter of the industry for the purposes of their analysis. Each group is defined by the combination of financial success and the perceived-value of the mix of product and service offerings:

  • Super Printers: 9 percent profitability
  • Survivors: 5 percent profitability
  • At Risk: 2 percent profitability
  • Expendables: -2 percent profitability

The key to movement up the scale from one category to the other is the ability to navigate from being a provider of printer products, to a provider of ancillary services, to a provider of business solutions to a provider of outsourced print management.

The report ends with the observation that when asked in a survey to select a strategy that best describes their firm, a majority of printers still select “general commercial printer.” This is one among many challenges that printers will face in the next year or two: how to address the transition from traditional print markets to the new world of communications and product and vertical niche services providers.

Summary and thoughts

These are the key points from the PIA report:

  • The recovery is going to be very slow at best
  • The entire printing industry was hit very hard by the crisis
  • There will be a further “shakeout” in the printing industry
  • Those who survive can expect a modest increase in sales
  • Industry profitability will also be modest and depend on where companies fall in the customer-perceived value spectrum.

The one area that the report does not discuss is the outlook on pricing. Although no figures are provided by PIA, I would submit that the softening demand and overcapacity problems of our industry have had, and will continue to have for some time, a downward impact on pricing. This undoubtedly is an element of the slow return to profitability that is predicted.

Over the past two years, we have been hit simultaneously by very difficult economic conditions and dramatic shifts in the media landscape. Budgets have been cut and the dollars that were previously spent on print media are migrating in ever-greater amounts to alternative technologies such as social media, eBooks, online portals, tablets and smartphones.

As an industry, we cannot run-and-hide from these changes; we must embrace them and find the appropriate role for print within the range of media options. We have to answer the question: what is it that only print can do that is both unique and plays a supporting role with the online world.

With the small signs of recovery in the business climate, although tentative and uncertain, we have cause for some optimism and can begin to once again to focus on those things that make print a cost effective, reliable and indispensable component of all publishing, marketing and communications programs. Along these lines, I would recommend the information contained in the PIA campaign called “The Value of Print” which specifically highlights many of these features: http://www.printing.org/valueofprint