Office printer maker Toshiba has cancelled its ‘National No Print Day’ autumn campaign in North America following a reaction from industry bodies that ranged from annoyance to derision.
On 4 June at the Sustainable Brands conference in San Diego, Toshiba had announced ‘the first annual National No-Print Day (NNPD)’ to be held on 23 October. ‘We know that approximately 336,000,000 sheets of paper are wasted daily – that’s more than 40,000 trees discarded every day in America,’ said Bill Melo, vice president of marketing, services and solutions at Toshiba America Business Solutions, Inc. ‘We as individuals and companies are failing to make the link between printing waste and its negative impacts on our landfills, natural resources and the environment. For those reasons, Toshiba is leading the charge with NNPD to raise awareness of the role of paper in the workplace by not printing at all for one day.’
Michael Makin, president of the industry association Printing Industries of America, wrote a letter to members on 20 June, saying ‘I am pleased to report that as a result of protests by Printing Industries of America, its members, and the industry as a whole, Toshiba has agreed to abort its National No Print Day!’
He said he had spoken to Toshiba’s Bill Melo, who was ‘quite concerned with how the campaign had been received by the commercial printing industry and stressed it was never the intent of his company to disenfranchise or insult our industry. He explained that the campaign was always directed at the office marketplace where he opined there was needless waste.’
‘My retort to Mr Melo was that if this was truly the case, his campaign should have been more specific,’ Mr Makin added. ‘It was not promoted as “let’s save office waste day” but rather National No-Print Day. I argued this was tantamount to having a “Do Not Walk” day or “Do Not Eat” day and that the grassroots response from our industry was only to be expected.’
Toshiba set up a website for the campaign at www.NationalNoPrintDay.com. This no longer seems to be operating.
Two Sides, the UK-based initiative intended to present the case for print and paper, had originally called it ‘one of the most blatant examples of greenwashing,’ pointing out that ‘just saying you are eliminating print and paper really does not mean you are necessarily helping the planet. It’s a lot more complex than that. If the alternative is, for example, electronic communication, then what is the environmental impact of this? Greenpeace have identified electronic waste as the fastest growing component of the municipal waste stream.’
Martin Eustace, director of Two Sides, has now welcomed the cancellation. ‘It appears that the widespread criticism that has greeted Toshiba’s ill conceived National No Print Day has taken the company by surprise,’ he said. ‘For an organisation with an invested interest in print to advocate “no print” is clearly ill advised, but to pretend to be on some sort of a mission to save trees and therefore the environment is just nonsense from an organisation which makes products with their own significant environmental footprint.’
‘Other heads of marketing may now be observing the backlash aimed at Toshiba; the wasted resources in a campaign that was pulled soon after launch; the embarrassment and perhaps shortened careers of those who came up with this daft initiative. They may now think twice before using the environmental argument in promoting their own organisations’ products or services.’
Contact: www.twosides.info
