Sustainable Fine Art Printing
Carbon Neutral since 2020
We are committed to leading the industry in minimising the impact of its activities on the environment, we understand the impact of our own operations, and will continue to work alongside our staff, customers and suppliers to improve every aspect of our business and its impacts.
We will;
We're proud to offset the carbon emissions we're responsible for as a business, however we understand that this is a short term solution and we must reduce our carbon footprint year on year until we reach net zero carbon emissions.
2021 Total Carbon Footprint: 30.12 tCO²e (tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent)
| Scope 1 0.59 tCO²e (2%) |
Scope 2 4.47 tCO²e (14.8%) |
Scope 3 25.06 tCO²e (83.2%) |
| The Scope 1 direct emissions came from one company owned vehicle and the mileage completed during the reporting period. | The Scope 2 energy emissions were produced from the electrical consumption from the office, along with staff working from home as a result of Covid-19. These emissions were attributed to additional energy usage that would not have otherwise occurred at home. | The majority of Scope 3 emissions came from the outbound delivery of goods to customers around the world. Other emissions came from inbound delivery of materials, staff commuting, waste and water consumption. |
Through the Carbon Neutral Britain Woodland Fund™, we have offset our total carbon emissions through internationally certified carbon offsetting projects.
Certified via the Verra - Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), the Gold Standard - Voluntary Emission Reductions (VER) or the United Nations - Certified Emission Reductions (CER) programmes, the projects below have been selected for us based on their direct and indirect impact around the world - not just in offsetting, but also in supporting education, employment and clean water, as well as having net positive impact on the local wildlife and ecology.
As the three largest, and most regulated voluntary offsetting standards used by organisations and even countries in their emissions reductions - all measurements and tonnes of CO²e offset are accurate, and verified.
Examples of the most recently supported projects include preventing deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest, reforestation after wildfires in Australia, as well as woodland planting in the UK.
As a print studio, we use a lot of paper, there's no way around this, however an important part of our workflow is to produce as little paper waste from printing as possible. We economically and efficiently print our customer's artwork, aiming to create minimal waste from every print.
Hahnemühle's natural range of papers available to print on.
In 2020 we were one of the first UK print studio to offer the complete range of Hahnemuhle's Natural Range of papers. We added Hemp and Agave to Bamboo, which we have stocked for many years. These three papers use materials grown in a more sustainable way, using less water and next to no pesticides or fertilizers. Read more about these papers on our website here;
dstudiouk.com/eco-fine-art.html
We stock papers from Hahnemuhle, Canson Infinity, St Cuthberts Mill and Fotospeed. They all use materials from certified forests and make sure all packaging is recyclable, you can find their environmental policies on their websites here;
hahnemuehle.com/en/about-us/sustainability.html
en.canson.com/sustainable-development/commitments
stcuthbertsmill.com/how-we-make-paper/
We use Epson printers and Epson's own genuine inks to ensure the highest quality prints are produced. We also use Epson's collection and recycling program, we send back all empty ink cartridges and packaging for Epson to recycle. You can find more information about this here;
We have been working hard to reduce plastic within our packaging and have replaced a number of the materials we previously used for more sustainable materials and materials that are easily recycled or ones that are biodegradable and/or compostable.
Our mail bags are made from sugar cane, not plastic, these provide waterproof protection for your prints, without the need for plastic. We replaced sellotape and polypropylene tapes with paper tapes for most packages and we're working to find suitable alternatives for the remaining use cases.
The stretch wrap and bubble wrap we use to wrap and hold together large print orders and our framed prints and/or canvas prints are made from biodegradable materials that completely break down within 2-3 years. They are also both recyclable materials.
Away from the prints we produce, we are always aiming to reduce paper within the studio, we have launched a number of paperless initiatives recently and will continue to do so in the future. All stationery we use in the studio is either produced from recycled products or from FSC certified forests.
Posting orders to our customers - and to your customers via our Dropshipping service - creates our largest scope of carbon emissions. In the UK, orders are sent and delivered by Royal Mail and Parceforce, you can view their combined environmental policy below.
We are keen to work with suppliers who are making inroads into more sustainable business practices, alongside the manufacturers of our papers and inks, we work with Kite Packaging, Kingfisher Packaging and Curran Packaging. Following our Carbon Emissions Report, reducing the number of inbound deliveries was a way to reduce our footprint, we're now ordering greater stock levels in the studio to reduce these deliveries to us and communicating with our suppliers to make sure they group our orders together, even if that means orders take longer to arrive with us.
In November 2021, we installed 21 solar panels on our studio building. Throughout the summer months, these panels supply us with 100% of the energy we need to run our studio.
During the cooler spring and autumn months, and the colder, darker winter months, our solar panels produce some but not all the energy required to run our studio, the balance is sourced from a renewable supplier, this energy is generated from a mix of wind (78%), solar (18%) and hydro (4%).
We have always looked to reuse and recycle the materials we have access to in the studio. Packaging, if looked after from one delivery to us, can easily be reconfigured to be used for an outbound delivery to one of our customers. Waste that we cannot make use of here is taken by our waste management company of choice, Veolia, who recycle 79% of our waste while diverting the remaining 21% away from landfill.
Our website is hosted with SiteGround who in turn use Google's Cloud based servers to host all their websites. Google runs some of the most energy efficient servers in the world with many running on renewable energy, Google are themselves a carbon neutral company.
We understand that customers, staff, suppliers, regulators and neighbours all value improved environmental performance and responsibility, we will continue to maintain and improve our high standards and monitor our own progress. We will update this page with future updates when available.
