Being ‘Green’ Pays Dividends

To date and to its knowledge, Anderson Lithograph has the only printing facility in the United States with a “totally enclosed” facility and near zero emissions, a feat accomplished as part of Anderson Lithograph’s on-site cogeneration electrical and thermal power generation plant. As part of the installation of this cogeneration facility, the RTO captures all the “fugitive” VOC emissions generated by the printing operations and exhausts them into a gas-fired combustion turbine for destruction as part of the electrical power generation process.

According to Barnett, the combination of the RTO pollution control device for controlling the VOC ink emissions and the cogeneration power plant reduce Anderson’s actual VOC emissions released to the ambient atmosphere to 2.86 tons per year in 2005, an average of 16 lbs. per day, or 2.71 percent of the company’s permitted allowable emissions of 553 lbs. per day. It’s hard to argue with numbers like these.

“Anderson Lithograph still remains active in efforts to find alternative materials that reduce the impact of printing operations on the environment,” Barnett says, adding, however, “We do not need to find lower VOC solvents for our own press blanket and roller cleaning operations, since the fugitive emissions produced by these functions are captured in our cogeneration facility.”

For more than a decade, Anderson Lithograph has had in place an Environmental Management System (EMS) that contains the general facility and specific equipment environmental operating permit requirements for more than a dozen local, state and federal regulatory agencies. Curiously, ISO 14000 certification is not yet among Anderson’s long list of environmental accomplishments.

Barnett explains: “Anderson Lithograph expects to apply for ISO 14001 certification during the latter part of 2007. Given the enormous resources that we already allocate to our environmental sustainability, Anderson Lithograph has not placed as high a priority on attaining ISO 14000 certification as one might expect because our management does not foresee that the cost expended on certification will provide a significant improvement in either our EMS or the overall environmental sustainability of the company.”