Climate positive, carbon neutral, carbon negative: What do they mean? and why have we chosen to be Climate Positive.

Nettl at Digiprint have joined the natural revolution, a movement led by the world’s most progressive businesses to create a climate positive world.

Are we the only independent to do this? No, not by a long shot, but we are the first Web, signage and print company to go completely climate positive and quite frankly we think that’s a total win! We want to be the industry leading standard when it comes to making a greener impact, we have done everything that we can in house to make changes to a greener way of working, but with he help of the climate gurus at ‘Earthly’ we have been able to make an even bigger impact!

200 years ago, the industrial revolution changed the way we live and work. It started to change the climate. Now, two centuries later, the only way we can give ourselves a fighting chance is by working with nature to undo the damage caused by industry and create a climate-positive planet. We call this “The Natural Revolution.”

In the fight against climate change, our first step must always be towards changing our actions and we can start by looking at carbon offsetting, consuming less, consuming better, and reducing our carbon footprint. However, nobody’s perfect. And to become “carbon neutral” or better yet, “climate positive” we need to acknowledge the place for carbon offsetting.

A little confused? Let’s get to the core of the definitions:

Carbon neutral or what you might have seen (the Net-Zero Goal) means that a company is offsetting as much carbon as they produce.

Climate positive means that an activity goes beyond achieving net zero carbon emissions to actually create an environmental benefit by removing additional carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Nettl at Digiprint are now Climate positive.

Carbon negative means the same thing as “climate positive.” Our business now removes more carbon than it produces giving a negative emission status.

We don’t need to do this, but ethically we have chosen to do so.

By working with a voluntary offset company “Earthly.org” we are ensuring that our business and in-turn our customers who purchase our products are contributing to climate positive activities.

We operate within an industry that relies on using power for printing, paper for our prints, and deliveries sometimes from overseas for our supplies, all of this adds up, and for us its ethically and morally important that we help heal our little blue pearl of a home.

What is the voluntary offset market?

This is a much smaller than the compulsory offset market, which governments set industry standard targets. However the voluntary market is far more relevant on an individual scale. This is where governments, organisations and individuals can buy carbon offsets to mitigate their own carbon emissions, and unlike the compliance market, these offsets are voluntary to buy and can counter individual carbon footprints. This is the type of carbon offsetting that we chose.

So what were we doing already?

Here at Nettl at Digiprint, we have been striving to reduce our environmental impact for over 10 years when we created go-greenprinting.

Our environmental impact changes included:

Upgrading to LED low energy lighting at all of our sites saving over 50% in energy used.

Switched to a green energy supplier with a 76% renewable 24% nuclear mix.

Upgrading our printing presses to low energy machines and organic toner printing.

Swapping our signage printers to HP eco Latex ink machines that produce no VOC’s

Purchasing FSC grade paper only that plants more trees than used in the process.

Reducing waste in our production processes and reusing whenever we can.

Recycling over 95% of our production waste and offering post use recycling to customers.

We switched all of our matt and gloss laminated print to a new biodegradable laminate.

Converting our heating and cooling to A++ inverter technology.

Using a green website hosting company.

So what will we be doing in the future?

Through a combination of investment in greener technology, Eco inks and recycled or forestry managed papers, waste management and clever sourcing we can offer a truthfully green printing service.

Our new partnership with Earthly will reduce further our carbon footprint to negative carbon and make Nettl at Digiprint truly “Climate Positive.”

We will soon be giving tree bombs to our customers that contain around 20 native elder tree seeds so you can actually plant your own trees in addition to the 1000’s of trees we plant already. So by sourcing web, print and signs from Nettl at Digiprint you automatically reduce your carbon footprint whilst supporting our small business. Happy warm feels all round!

To conclude.

We feel it is important that everyone has the opportunity to share in the responsibility of sustaining our environment and if we can do it, you can too. Or at least be a part of our journey to being climate positive.

We’ll be sharing our journey and climate impact updates with you as we start to get more interactive live information in regard to our ecological projects that we are sponsoring. Its time we all invested in a greener future.

Biodegradable Lamination

On 1st August 2018, we switched all of our matt and gloss laminated print to a new biodegradable laminate. That’s every laminated business card, flyer, folder, booklet cover, appointment card and postcard. When the print reaches the end of it’s useful life, it composts. Within two years it’s gone. Without leaving any contaminants in the soil.