Those of you who know Sarah and her Dad, know that she gets a bit of her recycling madness from him.  She recycles anything she can, and often gets frustrated that the garbage collectors don’t accept more in those handy little blue bins. Seriously, it is so easy to do now a days and we’re not sure why more people don’t find it imperative and a necessity? We are all so busy and everyone makes excuses about time, but it only takes a few seconds or minutes a day to be more conscious of our planet, our health and our futures.

So recently, we received a call from a relative of one of our clients and this call got us thinking. You see, this lovely lady wanted a photo that we took of her family at a recent wedding so she could get it printed for her holiday cards.  We explained her options for digital file purchasing or perhaps she would want us to design and print a card for her?  We were flexible, but she had wanted to use a printer that only used 100% recycled paper for her cards.  Not a problem, we offer this and it is right up our alley!  We’ve been offering recycled and earth friendly products for some time now.  Then it got us thinking that not everyone knows about this!!  So, we wanted to put it out there on the blogosphere that we offer 100% recycled paper for our press printed card stock and photo announcements, and the paper is beautiful!  It has a matte finish, and here’s the card we designed and printed for our environmentalist friend including the FSC and 100% recycled logos on it. (Thank you for coming to us to do this, we truly appreciate your business!)

A while back we had decided that we wanted to take some steps to be environmentally conscious and to minimize the negative impact our small business had on the environment.  Most people are aware that with printed photos there are chemicals in the processing, but this is thought of much less in this digital age.  So we searched for a printing partner that could help us with offering a variety of papers, conscious products and photo processing, as well as packaging.  We found WHCC and quite simply – we love them!  WHCC is a fully certified Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) printer with a chain-of-custody certificate. Pictured below is an FSC certified log with stamp of approval photographed by © Eric Goethals / FSC.

WHCC not only practices earth-friendly internal procedures, but they help us to produce our orders minimizing the impact that manufacturing processes, printing and packaging materials have on the environment with the least amount of waste possible.  Through WHCC, we offer a range of press product papers that feature recycled content and are FSC certified. We offer Art Recycled paper, a FSC certified paper made from 100% post-consumer waste paper, that is made with a carbon neutral and wind powered offset production process. We also offer a Standard Semi-Gloss paper which is FSC certified and contains 50% recycled content (40% pre-consumer and 10% post-consumer).

  WHCC also helps us by using the latest HP Indigo digital printing presses that feature an onboard waste-oil recycling system. We think it’s great that these HP Indigo printed products can be fully de-inked, so when our customers are done with them the products can easily enter the recycling stream.  The photo below shows a tree nursery (just one of the proud few) for an FSC certified forest in Mexico photographed by © Erik Goethals / FSC.

If that wasn’t enough, the corrugated cardboard boxes that WHCC uses for packaging and shipping are also environmentally friendly. The boxes are made from well-managed and sustainable forests under the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI). Corrugated cardboard is also easily recyclable through your recycler or on your own. By using unbranded and brown boxes, they are encouraging us to re-use the boxes for business shipments, or personally for family or friends across the world!

We certainly hope that you find this post useful and helpful in case you are looking for a top-notch professional printing partner or if you are curious as to how photographers and business owners, like Afterglow Photos, can do their part by being environmentally conscious in today’s world.  It’s 2011 and we encourage you to take part in the change in your community, in your town or business, or even in your home.  We are all responsible and one of the few things we can count on in life…is change.  So let’s embrace change in the New Year, and make the world a better place for our children and their children…one tree at a time.