Mark Terrill started working at Printgraphics Printgreen—the long-time printers of Dumbo Feather magazine— more than 20 years ago as an estimator. In that time he’s moved through the organisation to his current role as managing director. He’s overseen many changes to enable sustainable practices across the company. When I sat down with Mark, I learned just how much of a business with purpose Printgraphics is.
At Dumbo Feather, we only partner with businesses that are values-aligned. This means—for starters—that they demonstrate a commitment to positively impacting the world. Read more about how we partner.
Behind extraordinary ideas, there are extraordinary people.
DIANNE COTTER:Your mantra is print green. How possible is that when you’re printing on paper?
MARK TERRILL: It’s true, paper can be terrible for the environment. It has a horrible history of stripping down forests, which still happens, sadly. But there are good things we can do. We use FSC (Forrest Stewardship Council) certified paper, which means you can trace the paper that you use from us back to the plantation. Then we can say for sure it was grown in a sustainable way.
And you generate your own power, is that right?
We have our own water tank, we carbon offset all our cars and buy the most energy-efficient cars possible. So we don’t use green energy yet but it is part of our plan. We also have a rubbish policy. Ten years ago, we used to have this big skip in the carpark and twice a week a truck would take it away and dump it in landfill. Now we recycle all our paper and all the aluminum plates on our press. When the rubber blankets we use for printing are unusable, they get made into the black rubber used for playgrounds.
Oh wow, the bouncy stuff. I love that bouncy stuff.
Yeah, it’s cool isn’t it? Our ink tins get recycled. Basically everything that we use in manufacturing we recycle.
Has that been a conscious decision?
It started out as a conscious decision because we knew it was the right thing to do. But after a while it became passion. You get caught up in it and search for ways to recycle.
Have you had to have hard conversations with suppliers?
Yes. And it is hard to find people to take some stuff. Some stuff is hard to recycle. Not many people want it. And so you have to push. For example, the plastic strapping on the pallets. It’s hard to find a home for it. Our production manager spent a long time finding someone who wanted to use that product once we’re done with it.
What do you love most about your work?
I like the fact that print captures a moment in time when the internet is fluid and that is fantastic—when you pick up a printed product it is about how people are thinking and feeling at that particular time. There’s a level of permanence. I also like how it smells.
Our readers love the smell of the magazine.
Really? Dumbo Feather is a good magazine for smell.
Describe the world that you want to live in.
Umm, it is a big one. I don’t know if this is a perfect world, but I would really like politicians to make policies on what they believe is better for the world rather than their immediate future. I don’t think it would solve all our problems, but it would definitely help.
[Amandine, DF art director butts in]. You didn’t ask about the ink! I want to know about the ink?
It’s a vegetable-based ink. The ink used to be made from minerals but over time we have come to use vegetables.