Our Journey into Sustainable Printing
Climate change awareness has escalated to a new level and this critical concern is now dominating the mainstream. At the point of the first UK lockdown, Hollywood Monster had already been actively committed to putting sustainability right at the heart of our company ethos with a goal to be fully sustainable signage and printing business by 2022.
With our core markets closed, we used the lockdown to fully invest our time into achieving this hugely important goal. We engaged with our trusted suppliers CMYUK and the manufacturer Kavalan and we agreed to be the first European print house to test this new range of flexible print materials.
After 6 weeks the materials arrived at our facility in Birmingham and we spent three months putting the materials through vigorous R&D testing.
This involved:
- Fire
- Wind loading
- Pull and Strength tests
The print testing was seamless on our brand new 5m wide eco-friendly machines, we worked in conjunction with other print companies around the world for further testing where all products received glowing endorsements worldwide from printers and print finishing companies including the print machine manufacturers EFI….we were then ready to market these new game-changing products.
PVC Free Material
“It has the structural rigidity that you typically wouldn’t find in anything except a PVC mesh”
Sean Roberts, Global Customer Experience Manager, EFI
We then reached out to the market through our social platforms and various print industry publications regarding these products, with the conviction and knowledge that these products were tested to be as good if not better than PVC based materials in terms of strength, durability, look and feel. We were delighted with the huge amount of interest in our sustainable products across our network of customers old and new, all contacting us to learn more about how we could help them reduce their carbon footprint. During the month of October, we had sent out over 675 of our all-new fully sustainable sample packs across the UK and Europe and the interest continues to grow.
With a high percentage of our clients looking to make the switch from PVC products to PVC free materials, we felt the time had come to make a major change, and on 16th February 2021, we formally announced we will no longer supply PVC banner material as of 1st March – making us the first printer in the UK to do this, in the hope that this message will spread across other Print companies and to the end-user.
Sustainable Signage Company
We are proud of what we have achieved so far on our sustainable journey, even more so now we have become the first printing company to become full members of CMYUK’s loop a full traceable recycling process. This will guarantee that our PVC-free waste materials will be safely transformed into clean community energy or upcycled. We are delighted to confirm that none of our eco-accredited textiles will end up in landfill, diverting approximately 300 tonnes of printed material, which equates to 343 tonnes of Co2.
We’re continually pushing our sustainability goals and we are proud to help our clients reach theirs. Our dream of becoming completely sustainable by 2022 is now a reality and we look forward to progressing on this journey. For further information and details about our sustainable signage and our printing services, get in touch with us today.
