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De Turnhoutse Stadskrant is het eerste lokale infoblad dat klimaatneutraal gemaakt wordt. De CO2-uitstoot die het gevolg is van de productie van het blad wordt voortaan gecompenseerd.

De Stadskrant wordt zo duurzaam mogelijk gemaakt. Zo wordt ze gedrukt met  inkten op vegetale basis op 100 procent gerecycleerd en milieuvriendelijk papier. Maar uitstoot van CO2, het belangrijkste broeikasgas, is hierin onvermijdelijk. Artoos berekent dan ook voor elke Stadskrant hoeveel CO2 er wordt uitgestoten door de papierproductie, het drukken en afwerken, het transport, enz.  Die uitstoot wordt  vervolgens gecompenseerd door te investeren in projecten in projecten voor duurzame ontwikkeling in landen die niet gebonden zijn door het Kyoto-protocol.

Voor de Stadskrant (en het personeelsblad) werkt de stad samen met Artoos . Op het vlak van milieuvriendelijkheid en duurzaamheid vervult Artoos al meerdere jaren een pilootrol en was in 2010 de eerste drukkerij  in ons land die klimaatneutraal drukwerk kon leveren.

Achtergrondcijfers bij de Stadskrant

De berekening van de CO2 uitstoot van de stadskrant kan u controleren op www.artoos.be door dit certificaatsnummer in te geven: 331-53520-0112-1348

- Oplage: 21 500 exemplaren
- Verschijnt maandelijks
- Formaat:  A4
- Aantal pagina’s: gemiddeld 24 pagina’s
- Papier: Respecta100 mat - FSC-gecertificeerd (recycled)

Foto (vlnr) : Luc Hermans, Schepen van Milieu - Astrid Wittebolle, Schepen voor Communicatie - Rik Peys, Artoos

Kijk op www.artoos.be voor een stand van zaken

Klik hier voor de Nederlandse versie

Dans la nuit de vendredi 7 au samedi 8 octobre 2011, l’imprimerie Artoos a été victime d’un incendie. Le département finition a été réduit en cendres. Un court-circuit est sans doute la cause de l’incendie.

Grâce à l’intervention rapide des corps de pompiers de Haacht, Louvain et Malines et parce que l’infrastructure du bâtiment est complètement en ordre en matière de prévention les dégâts aux autres départements sont limités aux dégâts d’eau et de fumée.
Ces dégâts sont réparés ce weekend encore avec l’aide de deux sociétés spécialisées et de dizaines de volontaires. De cette façon, Artoos pourra reprendre ses activités dès le lundi 10 octobre afin de limiter au minimum les inconvénients pour les clients.

La direction a pris immédiatement les mesures nécessaires afin de répartir les travaux du département sinistré auprès de sous-traitants. De plus, un partenaire imprimeur a décidé de mettre son département finition à la disposition d’Artoos pendant la nuit.

“Au courant des prochains mois, ce département sera reconstruit complètement. Nous investirons dans un tout nouveau parc machine pour la finition. Grâce à notre structure financière saine et parce que tout est en ordre pour les assurances, je m’attends à pouvoir d’entamer la reconstruction très rapidement,” ainsi dit Jos Artoos, administrateur délégué.

Cliquez ici pour la version française

In de nacht van vrijdag 7 op zaterdag 8 oktober 2011 heeft er een uitslaande brand gewoed in de gebouwen van de Artoos Communicatiegroep in Kampenhout-Sas. De afdeling voor mechanische afwerking werd volledig vernietigd. De oorzaak van de brand is meer dan waarschijnlijk een kortsluiting.

Dankzij een snelle interventie van de brandweerkorpsen van voorpost Haacht, Leuven en Mechelen, en omdat de gebouwinfrastructuur op het vlak van brandveiligheid volledig in orde was, is de schade in de andere afdelingen beperkt gebleven tot rook- en waterschade.

Die schade wordt dit weekend hersteld door twee gespecialiseerde bedrijven en tientallen vrijwilligers, zodat Artoos op maandag 10 oktober zijn activiteiten kan hervatten en de klanten minimale hinder zullen ondervinden.

Regelingen zijn reeds getroffen opdat de werkzaamheden van de afgebrande afdeling tijdelijk opgevangen worden door bestaande relaties. Er kwam ook al een aanbod van een bevriende drukkerij die haar afwerkingsafdeling ’s nachts volledig ter beschikking wil stellen van Artoos.

“De komende maanden zal de verwoeste hal opnieuw opgebouwd worden. Er zal ook geïnvesteerd worden in een volledig nieuw machinepark voor de machinale afwerking van ons drukwerk. Dankzij de gezonde financiële structuur van ons bedrijf en omdat alles verzekeringstechnisch in orde is, verwacht ik dat we snel kunnen beginnen aan die heropbouw,” aldus Jos Artoos, gedelegeerd bestuurder.

Originally posted on the Marcom Factory blog
We’re seeing a rising demand for QR codes coming from our customers. And rightly so, given the ever growing numbers of smartphone users, even in this country with overpriced mobile data plans. And since we offer automated solutions for PURLs (personalized URL’s) and QR that demand is quite logical. But that does not mean adding a QR code is always a good idea.

Late last week, one of our customers made an urgent request for a QR code to be added on a publication. The URL to be encoded was their public website. So after generating it, I checked whether it would scan easily and resolve quickly (that’s just one of the technical hurdles one can encounter with QR). It did, but to my demise, it took me to their standard homepage, not to a mobile optimized site.

So I recommended to redirect to another page, or at least to add information near the QR so that the user would at least know where the QR was taking him/her before scanning it. Today our account manager showed me the proof of the publication, with information that was related to a specific promotion, followed by the QR. My first thought was: ok, our customer understood what we meant and adapted his content accordingly. But unfortunately the QR would still direct me to their same general website.

What could I do except reiterate our first advice… And wisely enough, their marketing manager decided to leave out the QR code completely. Which, given the timeframe for the publication, was the right thing to do.

QR can definitely and effectively make a ‘bridge’ between print and mobile web, if used correctly. But just like with any new or existing medium or communication technique, think about what you want to achieve and make sure it contributes to a better user experience. Especially in these ‘always on-always connected’ times where failure to deliver can result in instant punishment with #fail hashtags on twitter or other social media sites.

If you want to read a good article about what works and what doesn’t with QR, check out this post by Eric Anderson published on iMedia

If you’re into sustainability, you know the importance of carbon footprinting. At Artoos, we have been measuring our site and products carbon footprint since 2008. And we make these figures public, by publishing our sustainability report. If you have not done so, you can request your copy here.

As a part of our sustainability efforts, we also monitor what is happening in our supply chain. As you can easily imagine, paper is a main topic for us. So next to being active members of the FSC in Belgium , we monitor developments in LCA for paper and  advocate the use of recycled paper, as you can read in previous blogposts or by checking the results of the environmental calculator on our website. (it’s in the top right corner).

But the story continues, with a new pilot study published by a paper manufacturer : They calculated the water footprint of paper.

So what is this water footprint?

It is a way to express the impact of our way of life on one of our planet’s scarcest resources: fresh water. For some telltale examples, check out the waterfootprint network website to find out how much water it takes to produce a beef burger versus a soy burger or what the water footprint is of a U.S. citizen.

some examples of water footprint © Water Footprint Network

Paper’s water footprint : Pilot study in Germany from UPM

As most major paper manufacturers operating in Europe, UPM is serious about it’s social responsibility. And they have set themselves the target to have the best water footprint in the forest industry.
Here is a short video about it. The interesting part starts after 40 seconds.

The Water Footprint Assessment maps the amount of freshwater consumed throughout the production chain of paper. The results show that water for growing trees represents the primary contribution to the total water footprint of paper. In other words, most of the water needed to produce one sheet of A4 is used in the forest as part of the natural water cycle.

Water footprint divides the water into three different types – green, blue and grey.

• Green water represents the natural water cycle – the water evaporated by trees.
• Blue water refers to water withdrawn from rivers, lakes and aquifers.
• Grey water presents the amount of water needed to assimilate the remaining pollutants after cleaning process wastewater.

According to the pilot study, 60% of paper’s water footprint is green water,1% is blue water and 39% grey water. Around 99% of the water footprint comes from the supply chain and the remaining 1% from the actual paper mill production process.

You can find the study in summary and in full on the UPM website. The links are on the right hand side.

What is the take-away?

An interesting development, and we’ll definitely be watching this to see if other manufacturers follow suit.

According to Water Footprint Network’s Executive Director Ruth Mathews,” the pilot study shows that when forests are managed sustainably, paper products will have little contribution to the growing concerns of water scarcity.”

One of the lessons is : A water footprint study itself is not an exhaustive indicator but rather should be seen as part of a tool-kit, that together with others such as carbon footprint, life cycle assessment and sustainable forest management practices provide understanding of relevant issues when making informed decisions.

Sustainability in our industry? It’s the journey, not the destination…

The July issue of the Journal of Marketing published by the American Marketing Association publishes a detailed and interesting study on multichannel communication. The case is about a large car dealership communicating to customers about service plans etc, but the learnings can be applied to other service-oriented industries as well.

You can download it from one of the authors webpage in PDF. Reading it brought me right back to my statistics courses in university (not the fondest of memories I must admit). If predictor variables, multicollinearity and the like is not your cup of tea, skip that part but I do recommend reading the results (starting on page 102)

The results of the study give an interesting insight on how customers react to a combination of direct communication channels (phone/email/direct mail) applied in a relational marketing program to drive return purchases, or “repurchase spending”. Both phone and email contacts show a inverted U-shape pattern, meaning that increasing the contact frequency (more than 5 in the study) results in irritation and has an adverse effect on the return purchases.

Personalized direct mail however has a significantly higher positive impact on the return purchases.It would take more than 10 direct mail messages over the same time frame to reach the ’tilting’ point where increasing the contact frequency would decrease its positive impact. On top of that, direct mail drives repurchases of a monetary value which is 4 or 5 times higher. How’s that for ROI?

The results continue to show the effects of combining the channels and how one should be very careful in monitoring the contact frequency across channels to avoid irritation. Here again, the figures show direct mail by itself outperforms email and phone and how adding  too many emails can actually slash the repurchase spending.

My take away: this is empirical proof of the effectiveness of print media. Use it to challenge assumptions about the ideal communication mix for your brand!

I read an interesting study in The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment. It’s aim: quantifying the carbon footprint of the production of National Geographic Magazine. Its scope (or system boundaries) include everything from the forest, the paper mill, the editorial content up to the disposal as illustrated below (copyright Springer Verlag)

The findings of this study, which you can read and download here match our own findings with the CF calculation which we have published about in previous posts. And in our whitepaper which you can read on our public website. The methodology is also partly common (GHG protocol from the WBCSD). The paper in this case as in our calculations accounts for more than 70% of a printed product’s carbon footprint. The article strangely enough does not mention anything sourcing the pulp from responsibly managed sources, as in FSC-certified forest management which we find to be an integral and substantial part of more sustainable printing.

I would be interested to see a follow-up study with the comparison between the lifecycle assessment of the printed version versus the iPad version for example. I can see how the distribution part would benefit from transporting bits and bytes rather than atoms. but for the total lifecyle, my guess is the print version would win, if only because shared reading or rereading the paper version does not impact the carbon footprint, whereas every page-turn on your hard-to-recycle tablet needs electricity.

To be continued…

This is the right time to tell you about the latest change in our climate neutral printing program.

FSC and The Nature Conservancy host a side event at the Climate conference COP 16 in Cancun later today:

Improved forest management in the tropics to reduce carbon emissions: opportunities and challenges with forest certification
You can read about it here.

And what is the link with climate neutral printing you ask? Well, we’ve recently discovered a special FSC-certified forest in Uganda. It’s a project that aims to achieve reforestation in the national park of Kibale. They manage the forest according to the rules and principles of sustainable and responsible forestry outlined by FSC, but without any commercial logging. That same project is also qualified to sell carbon credits for the CO2 emissions that are saved  by planting and growing trees. The project was funded through the FACE-foundation in the Netherlands.

We’ve done a bit of research on this project and it seems credible. We talked to the certification body and to the people from the FACE-foundation. There are audits available both for the FSC- Forest Management certification as for the carbon credits that confirm the sustainable development objectives and the benefits to the local community . Our decision is clear. Starting today, we will purchase the carbon credits from the Kibale project.
So the next time you order climate neutral printing from Artoos, you will get:

• carbon disclosure, with a detailed calculation for the emissions caused by the paper, the printing process, the materials and the transport
• specific advice on how to reduce the emissions by choosing environmentally friendly FSC-certified papers or by reducing waste through better paper usage
• compensation by supporting the reforestation project in Kibale.

So to link back to UNFCC COP 16 : Yesterday was Forest Day in Cancun. Under the theme “Time to Act”, this event serves as a bridge between the 2010 International Year of Biodiversity and the 2011 International Year of Forests. We got the message. We acted. And our slogan for climate neutral printing still stands : Kyoto? Kopenhagen? Kampenhout! (and Kibale too). Because we can’t leave it all to the delegates at these international meetings. We need to take our responsibility at the local level as well.

If you want additional information on climate neutral printing in general or the Kibale reforestation project, leave a comment on this post.

Er is hard aan gewerkt en nu is het document klaar : de BDMA Green Direct Marketing Code geeft tips, praktische checklists en advies om je directe communicatie duurzamer te maken. Artoos werkte mee aan de redactie ervan, samen met andere specialisten uit de diverse vakgebieden van DM.

Greet Dekocker, Directeur van het BDMA, stelde het vandaag in primeur voor tijdens de DM-Update workshop die aan dit thema was gewijd.

Je kan het document ook terugvinden op de website van het BDMA, of je kan het hier downloaden:

BDMA Green Direct Marketing Code

BDMA Code Vert du Marketing Direct

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