News & Notes

Speaking before a near-capacity audience Thursday evening, Derek Smith, a paper industry consultant, and Edith Graves, marketing director of Eason Associates, shared a path to environmental responsibility for graphic designers at AIGA's "Improve. Invent. Inspire." Event in the Creative Alliance's beautiful Patterson Theatre.

Smith eased the audience into the startling, but all-too-common facts about human transgressions against the planet. He then expressed surprise about the lack of movement by designers on taking a stand for the environment. Even with stronger links to the notion of environmental responsibility, Smith maintains that graphic designers mostly lag behind even the suits of the paper merchants and printers on movement on the environmental front. Imagine that.

In the last five years, you don't need a consultant to tell you that the environmental movement has endured what one could call a bit of a sea change, going from hardly proven to hardly undeniable. Derek, a consultant to businesses in search of environmental responsibility, painted a picture where, get this, "big business" realized that they had better act in order to preserve not only their environment, but also capitalize market share. Hecontends that more and more businesses recognize that doing right by the environment not only is the right thing to do, but also makes business sense.

With a matter-of-factness not unlike the 2000 blockbuster film, The Matrix, Morpheus... uh... Derek Smith offered a path not unlike the choice Neo confronted when asked to take either the red pill or the blue pill. Take the red pill and you wake up in your studio or firm and you can keep denying that the paper you spec, the inks that you mix, ever affect the environment. Take the blue pill, or for argument's sake, the "green" pill, and designers are confronted with truths that you can't work around. These are truths that designers have to work through.

"The paper and printing industry is one of the top five polluters in the world," Derek maintains. Everyone involved in paper and print will be implicated. The deforestation of some of the largest forests of the world can—and sometimes do—end up on your coffee table. The infamous Victoria Secret catalog flap proved that a business' ignorance can no longer provide cover for wasteful business practices. These companies need to know that they have partners who are willing to turn the corner with them and seek, or rather require, practices that make proper us of the environment.

OK... Assuming you've taken the green pill. What next? Edith Graves, marketing Director of Washington, DC's Eason Associates says, "We have a responsibility to spread the word." That they did. After writing an environmental philosophy, Graves said her firm launched a green campaign (which has won multiple awards) to tell their clients and their suppliers that their approach is a "green approach."

Turns out that being a tree hugger for them didn't mean giving up their day jobs in the firm as they've managed to cultivate leadership in an issue close to their core philosophy. All of their clients have also adapted a green approach.

They even developed an internal rating system that registers the ecological impact of their production ranging from one star for recycled paper up to four stars for FSC- and SFI-certified paper —the increasingly popular seals of approval that demonstrate a trail of environmental responsibility in the harvesting of paper.

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Paper Certification

FSC: Forest Stewardship Council is an independent, membership-based organization promoting responsible management of the world's forests.
www.fsc.org

The Sustainable Forestry Initiative® (SFI) program is based on the premise that responsible environmental behavior and sound business decisions can co-exist ...
www.sfiprogram.org

To calculate your carbon footprint go to ...

Conservation.org/CarbonCalculator
www.Plant-A-Tree-Today.org 
www.carbonfootprint.com
www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.html
www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/carboncalculator/

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ABOUT DEREK SMITH:

Paper and Environmental Expert Derek Smith was Chairman and CEO of the largest paper merchanting group in Southern Africa before moving to the US, where his experience at the American Forest and Paper Association first exposed him to the huge changes in environmental reform taking place in the paper industry.  Smith formed his own consulting business which has advised the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), SFI (Sustainable Forestry Initiative), the Metafore Organization, and leading paper, printing, and design groups on combining social responsibility and profitability through grasping the business opportunities which exist in environmental reform. Green design is good for business. Smith speaks around the country about the critical need to accept the responsibility of environmental protection on a personal, corporate and social basis through a clear understanding of the implications of actions in the world of paper, print and design.

ABOUT EDITH GRAVES:

For nine years, Edith Graves has served as Marketing Director of Eason Associates, a small, award-winning graphic design studio in Washington, DC that has an environmental philosophy and offers clients design options that better protect the environment. She has worked in a marketing capacity at both corporations and creative firms, as well as for a division of the NASDAQ Stock Market, Shearson Lehman Hutton in New York, and as vice president of a design firm in the DC area.