By Sean Delaney
Larry Warren began a small multi-press in his garage in 1972.
Intrepid, and hard-working, he had a feeling he could make it work.
Within no time at all, he had moved to an Emery Village location and had a burgeoning film shop working for the movie industry.
Sound impressive? Well, if you keep digging, what Warren’s Waterless Printing has become will impress even more.
In a time when environmental awareness is becoming more relevant than ever, Warren’s is wondering where everyone has been. The printer is completely waterless, and a zero discharge production facility all because that’s who Larry was.
“Larry, that’s just the type of person he is, he’s very concerned about the environment,” said vice president Glen Laycock. “So, he decided to make us a leader. And now, we’re sitting back and watching other print companies try to get to that point. And we did it voluntarily. We didn’t wait for any government mandates that said you have to do this.”
When the film side of their business started to disappear, Laycock explained, it was an industry movement everyone saw coming. The digital era was developing, and developing fast.
“It happened in a year or two,” Laycock said.
So Warren’s decided to take their expertise and get into printing. The business went waterless because they wanted to stand out, but also because it resulted in a higher quality of print. Combine that with the fact that it could lead to such a green outcome, and it turned out the business was right up Warren’s alley.
“With print, to be environmentally friendly, people think you need vegetable-based inks and recycled paper,” Laycock explained. “They don’t take into account the process.”
Printers will advertise themselves as a green business because of those vegetable-based inks, but Warren’s is using all that, and doing so much more. What isn’t often explained is the impact of the printing process itself. The vice president explained that the water consumption, and resultant discharge of the process can be where the real environmental hazard can result. And Warren’s solved that problem years ago.
“A 40-inch, six colour press can discharge up to 80,000 litres of wastewater per year,” Laycock said. “And as it’s a waste by-product, there can be chemicals in that, solvents used to clean rollers, and more, and it all goes right into our sewer system.”
And there are companies that are filtering that water now, trying to catch up, but Warren’s can already lay claim to not even using that resource. Period.
“We’ve eliminated that part of the process, and in doing that, eliminated the air emissions. Inks give off a gas, solvents give off a gas, so because we’ve eliminated all the dampeners, we’ve taken air emissions right out of our work as well.”
Warren’s is beginning to rack up some awards for it as well, recently becoming FSC certified, and taking home a Canadian Council of the Minister’s of the Environment award.
To find out more about them, visit the company website at: warrenswaterless.com
Or get in touch with them at:
711 Clayson Rd.
(416) 745-8200