Sustainability Policy – Smart Media

We believe that we have a role & responsibility to play, albeit small, in promoting sustainability and sustainable development. This means that all our activities should be conducted in a manner which protects and enhances the environment, conserves and restores natural resources, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and supports the community and society as a whole. We aim to reduce not only our own environmental footprint but also the impact of our clients through print media and also to influence printing companies which we work with on our clients’ behalf

Printing:
We recommend FSC/PEFC and recycled papers for printing.
We also suggest digital short-run prints to cut down on excess print that will be unneeded.
We encourage the print shops we engage to comply with the Irish EPA Green Public Procurement guidelines (section 8, Paper & Printing Criteria) when printing for our public body clients.

Exhibition design:
We recommend using honeycomb recycled board rather than foam board, which contains non-recyclable polystyrene or polyurethane. Where appropriate, exhibition materials are salvaged and re-used rather than being consigned to a skip, for example, pull-up displays. We always advise our clients on the responsible disposal of exhibitions and other print materials.

Transport:
All of our staff cycle or use public transport to commute to work. We also work remotely from home. This blended approach keeps our transport-related carbon emissions to a minimum.
Aim to transport printed materials produced outside Ireland by surface transport rather than air freight, where possible

Data Storage:
We will periodically review our approach to managing our data storage, keeping in mind the carbon emissions involved in transferring data items across the Internet, and storage in the cloud. Currently, cloud storage entails lower carbon emissions than running a private data server, and thus we will continue storing our active data on the cloud.
Completed projects will be archived to locally held storage media once a grace period after project completion has expired.

This Sustainability Policy will be actively communicated and promoted to staff, clients and visitors, and progress and implementation will be reviewed on an annual basis.

The policy will be subject to a comprehensive review at least every five years.