SpeedPro East Bay’s “Green” Efforts

APRIL 21, 2017| SpeedPro East Bay

When you think of a print shop, you probably don’t really think of the word “green.”  Well, SpeedPro East Bay is trying to change that stereotype and make every effort we can to be environmentally friendly.  In honor of Earth Day, we’d like to share with you just a few ways that we try to stay eco-friendly.

LEED Certified Printers & Latex Inks

Our printers are state of the art LEED certified and 100% hypoallergenic.  Also, instead of using solvent inks like most printers, we use latex inks.  Solvent inks contain a high amount of VOCs which are volatile organic compounds.  These can have serious health effects such as respiratory irritation or even worse, cancer.   Instead, we use latex ink which provides a healthier environment, richer colors, and is easier to recycle the paper.  They also don’t smell the way solvent inks do!

We Use Recycled Materials

Being a print shop, we could go probably go through tons of materials a week.  However, we use post-consumer recycled materials to ensure that we’re not wasting resources and it’s still high-quality material.

We Recycle Materials

There are a few different creative ways that we recycle old jobs or unused materials.

1. We’ve talked about them before but Alameda Arts  is one of them. They’re an after-school art program here in Alameda that allows kids of varying ages to express their creative side.  Whenever we have excess materials or misprints, rather than throwing them out we donate them to this program.  The kids then have a blast with the materials and turn them into works of art.

2. Most people will have a banner printed for a one-time event.  After that, they’ll throw it out or won’t know what to do it.  We offer our clients the ability to return the banners back to us and we’ll take care of the rest.  We have a relationship with Sonoma USA which takes old banners and turns them into duffel bags, totes, laptop bags, and more.  This is a great way to turn something that would be thrown out, into something more useful.

These are just a few ways that we aim to be green and eco-friendly.