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Working in the procurement department for any charity is tough. Not only do you have to reconcile the twin drivers of low price and high quality, you also have to ensure that your buying decisions meet rigid ethical criteria. Throw in stringent environmental guidelines and you get the tightrope that Yael Hodder, creative and publications manager of the Soil Association, must walk every day.

The environmental charity, which campaigns for a global shift to sustainable, organic food and farming practices, instils its ethos throughout its business supply chain. This places incredible pressure on employees such as Hodder to deliver the goods. However, Hodder is not fazed by such pressures. Indeed this is her dream job. “I had a great passion for the environment from an early age and a great passion for design and print,” she explains. “You might think that these two things could never sit comfortably, but environmental awareness can add creativity.”

Hodder, who joined the charity in 2006, comes from a graphic design background, but has worked with print throughout her career, including a stint screen printing posters for a women’s co-operative.

From this first-hand experience she has seen the impact on the environment that the design and print industries can inflict and believes that everyone has a responsibility to source paper and print in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way.

“I am robust with my research and with my actions to purchase print responsibly,” she says. “The Soil Association’s reputation is for the highest standards in food farming, so how could the publication team’s be anything else?”

The charity’s annual print spend is around £250,000, though this fluctuates from year to year depending on the projects it undertakes. Print runs range from 500 up to 24,000. While Hodder doesn’t see spend falling in the near future, her goal is to buy “less print less often” and investigate other ways of getting the charity’s message across.

“The Soil Association’s logo has a lot to say and this can be achieved through a variety of media,” she says. “It makes absolutely no sense to swamp the public with printed materials, when a radio interview, email, podcast or PDF can more successfully target an audience without the damage to the environment that print brings.”

However, Hodder adds that this does not make print redundant. Recently a colleague approached her wishing to promote sustainable, locally sourced food in university restaurants to students. The proposal was to print as many postcards as the budget allowed. “I had visions of boxes upon boxes stashed away never used and never written on and then after a few years a spectacular re-entry into the recycling cycle,” says Hodder. “Far better to really think about the target audience – students – and what they use most.”

The solution was to design and produce mug mats for use throughout campus that the students could also take home. For durability, mats were printed on plastic, which was made entirely from recycled cups.
This example underlines Hodder’s print ethos and how basic considerations made at the design stage can help to have less of an impact on the environment. These considerations can range from using standard A-size formats and not designing to the edge of the page, right through to less solid ink coverage.

There are also a number of processes that she refuses to use because of their environmental impact, such as fluorescent and metallic inks (because they’re not available with a vegetable ink base) and finishing options such as gluing because it is not recyclable.

Imposing these kinds of restrictions on your average printer would cause endless headaches, but Hodder is fortunate enough to count two of the country’s greenest printers at the head of a 10-strong print roster – local firm Wells Printing Services and Gloucestershire-based Severnprint.

Green credentials
Neither is on a contract, but both provide the key ingredients that Hodder expects as standard – namely environmental accreditations, high levels of customer service, quality and proximity.

Value for money is also important, but the awarding of a contract would never be made on cost alone. This is one of the reasons that Hodder would not entertain using a print management company. “Print managers specialise in cost cutting and if something comes in cheap then it has to either be at a cost to the planet or to the people who produce it,” she explains.

“We like to buy print from companies that have invested in environmental equipment and procedures, share the same green vision as the Soil Association and care whether our job is done to the best standard they can achieve,” she says. All of the printers must also be prepared to use 100% post-consumer waste recycled paper, as this is something that Hodder insists is used for all print jobs.

There is now a wide range of recycled paper available, but it wasn’t always so, she recalls. “I was researching the use of recycled paper for a job when I worked in the public sector and asked a printer what sort of grades were available. His response was ‘you don’t want to go down that route. It’s terrible quality, prohibitive in cost and all paper is recycled anyhow because it’s made from pulp’,” she says.  

Thankfully, things have changed, however. “There are no, or minimal, cost implications to using most recycled papers,” she claims. “Some can even be less expensive. And given that paper makes up only about 30% of the cost of a print job any price variation really does become insignificant.”

Another area in which Hodder is not prepared to compromise is colour management. While she admits that she is stricter on environmental standards, perfect colour is becoming more of a concern.

“Colour management is a big issue for us at the moment. We have recently installed some new Apple Macs, but we still have some older ones so consistent colour calibration between machines and between applications is overdue. We will be approaching all of our main printers for configurations to make PDFs appropriate to their presses.”

Core mission
As important as colour control might be, the key issue for Hodder and her team at the end of the day is adhering to the environmentally friendly ethos that the charity holds so dear. All she needs to do now is persuade others to follow the same path.

“Choosing to use environmental papers and printers is a significant step to take, but it is easily achievable and would create a tremendous impact on reducing damage to environment, wildlife and human health,” says Hodder. “As awareness grows, so inevitably will the demand for environmentally friendly paper for print and print production. The future is looking greener every day.”

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THE SOIL ASSOCIATION
The Soil Association was founded in 1946 by a group of farmers, doctors and concerned citizens, including Lady Eve Balfour, whose book The Living Soil made an international impact during the Second World War

Its aim is to create an understanding of the direct link between farming practice and environmental and human health

Headquartered in Bristol, the charity employs 240 people and has more than 23,000 members. Soil Association Certification is an accreditation body that certifies farming and food producers, textiles and beauty products

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CASE STUDY: THE GLASTONBURY FESTIVAL
The Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts provides an ideal opportunity for charities such as the Soil Association to reach their target audience. It also provides the perfect creative backdrop for Soil Association creative and publications manager Yael Hodder to produce compelling print.

This year her brief was to design and print a map of organic food stalls at the festival, but the main problem lay in gauging the print run required. Given the numbers passing through the festival – an estimated 700,000 – any significant overrun could generate a lot of waste. In the end, Hodder decided to create a dual-purpose publication - on one side a map of the stalls, on the other a guide to climate friendly food.

The publication, which had a print run of 40,000, was designed to be folded to fit the format of a plastic wallet that was given to all festival-goers by the event organisers and was handed out by teams of volunteers and Soil Association employees on site. Litho printed by Wells Printing Services, on the 100% post-consumer waste recycled grade Take 2, the publication was a resounding success, according to Hodder. “It definitely worked. I’ve subsequently seen them in people’s houses, pinned to kitchen notice boards,” she declares proudly.