51 Green Printing Tips

Tip #17 - How Do You Save Money On Your Next Print Job?

Today Greg is discussing a question that is raised now more than ever when it comes to green printing:

How Do You Save Money On Your Next Print Job?

Saving money is the first priority of many businesses and organizations who need print jobs, and we get many questions on how you can go green and still save money. As we wrote here before there's no contradiction between the two, and I would like to suggest couple of ideas on how it can be done.

1. Ask for alternative papers that are comparable to what you are looking for. I have a few ideas on saving you money.

- Use Sugar Cane Tree Free paper instead of Seed paper
Seed paper is one of the most expensive papers on the market today. My clients cringe when I tell them each 13 x 19 sheet is $4.00. If you can get away from having the seeds grow into flowers when disposing the paper, I like sugar Cane as a substitute. It is Tree Free, and looks recycled. It is 1/10th the price.

- Use 80# uncoated text in 100% PCW, when switching from 100# gloss recycled text for your next run
The uncoated text paper bulks higher than coated paper. The 80# text would feel as thick as the 100# coated text, and save you 25% in the amount of pounds of paper needed.This would also save money on postage for any mailing jobs.

- Use a 90 bright white grade, instead of 96 bright white for your newsletters
That would save you $700, if you needed 500 pounds of paper. Our 90 bright 100% PCW paper is half the price of our 96 brightness papers in 100% PCW. If you needed 5000 pounds of paper, that is a huge $7000 savings.

2. Let your printer or your agency suggest alternative page sizes
Before you design the project. Sometimes ½" can make a big difference in your print bill. I just asked a client to go from 10" x 4" to 9.5" x 4", on their flat size, and we saved our client a ton of money,. We ran a 13 x 19 sheet, and I could get 6 out of the 13 x 19 size sheet, instead of 4 out.

Another example is our own landfill brochure. We had a page size of 6.5 x 6.5 inch for our 28 page plus cover brochures. We could only get two up on our 13 x 19 size digital paper. By making the page size 6 x 6, we could run 3 up, and since we had 8 forms, that saved us over 30% on our print
costs.

Do you have more questions about going green and saving money on your next print job?you can email to greg@ecofriendlyprinter.com.