By now, all of us are aware of the climate crisis and the impact it is having at home and across the world. Whether it’s wildfires, melting ice caps, or never-ending heatwaves, there is a growing concern as to how we treat the planet. There is rightful anger towards corporations, with governments and citizens alike feeling there needs to be more responsibility by businesses to cut emissions and to be more environmentally conscious.
Being in the print business, Purpose Printery accepts that we are in an industry that traditionally hasn’t always been fair to mother nature. Quite often it’s through selling cheap, disposable, plastic items that end up in landfills after a couple of uses. Or, it’s simply the sheer quantity of products that are produced that aren’t even needed.
Purpose Printery doesn’t accept that this is the only way to do business. In this article, we’re going to explain how the selling of promo products doesn’t have to result in armageddon.
Print on Demand
The first and probably the most beneficial way to help the planet while selling promo products is to use a print-on-demand (POD) method to print your marketing material. Why? Print-on-demand eliminates many of the most wasteful practices that occur in the printing industry. One of the biggest disasters that are caused by printing promo items is the waste that is caused by bulk-buying products.
Shockingly, if these products aren’t sold, they frequently go straight to the dump. Moreover, even the products that do sell, often spend a long time sitting idle in a warehouse. Add up all these warehouses in the country and just think of how much energy they’re all using. POD does away with this. Purpose Printery is at the forefront of this new method of printing, where only what’s needed is printed. No need to buy masses of stuff that may never be wanted, no need for energy-draining warehouses to store loads of products. This is just one of many benefits POD can offer. For more information about print-on-demand, you can visit this blog.
That’s a lot of energy… big warehouses can be avoided by using print-on-demand
Print using recycled materials
While the POD system has lots of environmentally friendly benefits, eliminating warehouse waste is of little purpose, if your business is still dependent on plastic and one-use items for promo ideas and packaging. That’s why it’s best to use environmentally friendly materials on what you are going to print.
There are a few ways to achieve this. The first is by using responsibly sourced materials. Instead of wood, bamboo is a better alternative. One-use promo items should be substituted for something far more durable. Replacing brand-new cotton for your t-shirts with recycled material is a brilliant idea to create a more sustainable printing product.
At Purpose Printery, we have a great selection of products that feature these modern innovations to create sustainable printing products and you can see our full product line here.
Use this Viking tumbler instead of a plastic bottle to promote your business
Distribute effectively
While how you print and what you print are the key areas to help reduce the emissions promo printing can produce, the way products are distributed is also really important.
What does this mean? It means we have to be smart with how we giveaway our promo products. Think carefully about who and where you are distributing these items. Distributing a million magazines to advertise your mobility scooter probably won’t gain many web clicks if you send them to college campuses. Likewise, your skateboard inventory probably won’t sell out if all your brochures are given to old folks’ homes.
By being careful about how you distribute your promo materials, not only will you help save the planet but you might find you get a better return on your investment, too.
Hands up: Who else thinks business events are a great way to distribute promo items?
Combine with other forms of marketing
Another way to be clever with how you can reduce waste is by incorporating other forms of marketing to supplement your print promo ideas. You can combine digital marketing to benefit your print promo campaign. For example, instead of printing 100 promo t-shirts, you could print 10. Post a competition on your social media to win one of these well-designed tees, and you might even find that your business gains more attention doing this than just printing a bunch of shirts.
Combine print promo ideas with social media and your business will get the best of both worlds.
Contribute in other areas
Okay, okay, we admit it, this one doesn’t exactly relate directly to sustainable printing, but it is still a great idea to print guilt-free and make a huge difference. A really great idea is to donate a portion of your profits to charities that are helping to counteract the effects of climate change. Sinking emissions doesn’t have to correlate with sinking profits, however. What you can do is remind customers that 10% or so goes to charity and you may find customers are more likely to order from you than from competitors who keep every nickel for themselves.
Conclusion
We hope we have proven that making promo products can be achieved without harming the environment. If you use the five ways to print sustainably we have listed, your business really can make a genuine difference to help prevent climate catastrophe. Even if your business just uses one or two of these methods, this can allow us to enjoy awesome promo products without destroying the earth.
At Purpose Printery, we understand that no matter how environmentally friendly a business is, without profitability it simply cannot function. Therefore, we hope we’ve demonstrated that going green can be a great way to boost your business. For more information on how Purpose Printery can help with all your printing needs, you can read more of our blogs, or contact us and we’ll help in any way we can.
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