We caught up with Jack Pearson, Sustainability Manager at instantprint. An online printing company, instantprint specialize in fast, high-quality and affordable business cards, posters and flyers. When getting clients what they need – quickly and cheaply – Jack’s job is to keep sustainability at the heart of operations.
Who is instantprint and what role do you play?
instantprint knows their material impact, supply chain impacts and energy consumption could lead to negative outcomes for local ecosystems and future generations if not managed correctly. The Sustainability Team is led by myself, Jack Pearson, instantprint’s own Sustainability Manager. Where I am supported in this role by my manager, instantprint’s Head of Compliance, Richard Crow.
instantprint are ISO14001 Certified, comply with FSC requirements that allow them to sell FSC certified products and are also a part of the voluntary ‘Achilles Carbon Reduction Scheme ISO14064-1’. The Achilles Scheme ensures the data they report is scrutinised and checked by a third party and mandates continuous reductions in CO2e year-on-year.
Can you tell us about instantprint’s sustainability strategy
instantprint developed a comprehensive Sustainability Strategy, split across four ‘branches’ each with their own associated KPIs and targets.
The first is ‘Conscious About Cutting Carbon’. Concerned with the continuous reduction of CO2e across instantprint’s operations. In 2023 a Solar Array was installed on site, generating 208,000kWh in its first year. The project scope was reduced due to limitations with the national grid, however instantprint is actively working to apply for a G100 application, which would allow them to increase the size of the solar array with built-in redundancies to overcome the roadblocks. instantprint also ensures all their imported energy comes from renewable sources on REGO backed tariffs. 99.43% of all imported energy is from renewable sources.
‘Putting the Planet First’ is the second branch, concerned with preventing pollution and dealing with waste safely and responsibly. In 2022 instantprint achieved 0% waste to landfill. Further to this, in late 2023, instantprint changed their key waste partner resulting in a greater percentage of their waste being recycled, in line with the principles of the waste hierarchy. Since the change and average of 96.23% of waste is recycled.
The third branch is ‘Sustainability at the Source’ which is concerned with mapping instantprint’s supply chain to highlight any areas of risk in 4 areas, environmental, social, quality and resilience. instantprint engaged their first cohort in 2023, and cohort 2 in 2024 asking the top 80% of their spend to fill in a due diligence questionnaire. When an area of risk is identified, instantprint seeks to work with the supplier in question to alleviate the risk by sharing knowledge and supporting them in any way possible.
The fourth and final branch is focused on ‘Inspiring Green Team and Culture’ where Jack works with stakeholders across the organisation to ensure all team members are actively involved in shaping future sustainable projects.
What sustainability goals have instantprint set out?
When developing the Sustainability Strategy, instantprint established two top level Net Zero Targets.
The first is to achieve Net Zero across scopes 1, 2 & downstream 3 by 2030. Downstream Scope 3 refers to the transport and delivery of goods downstream of the manufacturing process.
Their second target is to achieve Net Zero across all scopes by 2035.
