Latest Interviews
Ian Crossley – ‘How Green Business Can Bloom’
Posted: Tuesday 5th Aug 2008
Ian Crossley wants to save the world. Or at least, as much of it as he can. As the Managing and Technical Director of Greenhouse Graphics Limited, he’s also well versed in the ways of printing and his company has pioneered methods that let them print at a high standard without, quite literally, costing the Earth. He outlined this at the last Wired Wessex networking event, so of course what better route to recycle it than with an interview afterwards?
The company itself is fairly recent, as Ian notes. “We were established in 1993, we’ve got two directors and eight staff, and our turnover is around £600,000 a year. As I said, we’ve got a premises in Bramley, outside of Basingstoke, and… What else can I tell you?”
It’s surprising how many people get caught short when they are first interviewed. But anyway, run through what you discussed at our meeting. “Well, we’re probably the area’s and certainly the region’s leading environmental printer. We have our own printing system which I won’t go into too much depth about right now.”
(Said printing system is actually quite novel and interesting, but as Ian says, it does need a bit of time to explain.)
Anyway, onwards… “Most of our business is based on people looking for sustainable solutions for their print, so they come and look for us. We’ve also got quite a strong niche in magazine printing, and we do quite a number of regular magazines which fits in quite nicely with the environmental side of the business. We’re also trying to promote local community magazines through a web site that’s just about to be launched – probably by October – which is called www.fromthesmallestseed.co.uk, and promotes local businesses supporting local magazines and vice versa.
Greenhouse Graphics also leads the way in the form of some nifty photovoltaic solar panels, that grace its HQ. Ian is certainly proud of them. “We’ve got 14 PV solar panels installed on the roof. They generate anything between 3 and 15% of our energy use, depending on what we’re doing. We installed those in 2005 and, as far as I’m aware, we’re the only printer that has PV solar panels generating its own electricity.”
But such devices cost a lot of money. As Ian pointed out at his talk, it takes 20 years for a solar panel to pay for itself in terms of electricity generated, with only a 30 year life overall. But paying for a solar panel doesn’t always mean paying full price, at least not while you’ve also got a marketing budget and an eye for good PR.
“What we did was look at it in the conventional bean-counting way, and it did really come down to a 20 year life. But we got a grant, which halved the cost, and halved the life in terms of payback, and we also looked into how using the panels for more than just saving money, as more of a marketing tool. What we did was allocate £50 a month of the marketing budget over a period of five years to the panels. It is difficult to measure absolutely, but we use pictures of the panels a lot in our promotional materials, and in this year’s Hampshire Sustainable Business Awards – we’re the present holder – the actual launch of the awards used a picture of the judges in front of our solar panels. So they’ve been quite positive and good value for us. That’s how we’ve reduced the cost, and we’ve got it down to a three or five year lifespan before it starts paying for itself.”
But of course the real theme of Ian’s talk was, from this writer’s perspective, how ecology actually means efficiency. Or rather, the more efficient your company, the more money it makes but also the more eco-friendly it is. Greenhouse Graphics is a case in point, as Ian agrees.
“Any business that presents itself as green or sustainable or whatever runs the risk of being seen as not commercially sound. But we present our business very as a strong commercial concern, and we see that and the ecological side of our business running parallel to each other. The way we do that is by looking at efficiency cost savings, which are all about waste reduction, energy reduction and so on. And we’re trying to do that all the time.”
It’s certainly reaping dividends. “By reducing things like industrial alcohol, which has trebled in price, we not only reduce the cost in buying it, but also the costs in insurance as we’d significantly improved health and safety. And that was the first time in all my time in business that I’ve seen a reduction in the cost of insurance last year, because of some of our policies. So by doing those things, we’re making cost savings. A lot of presses have to go through several hundred sheets before they come up good, but due to technology as well as training and modifying some of the conventional printing processes, we’ve managed to get a lot of that wastage considerably reduced, and we’re constantly trying to do that all of the time.”
And that’s the point – there’s no point being environmentally friendly if it costs you your business. But then, there’s no point having a business if, in the long term, you don’t have a world to do business in. Ian’s argument, if it means anything, is that the two are compatible, as long as you’re willing to think it through.