In our industry, the old saw, "Necessity is the mother of invention," could be restated as, "The price of newsprint is the mother of conservation."
Out of dire necessity, newspapers across the country are searching for and finding new ways to save newsprint. NAA wanted to capture some of those ideas in its updated Newsprint Conservation Guide, so it proposed a contest, encouraging members to send in their best practices. Those ideas that were of sufficient merit to be included in the updated guide were entered into a drawing for prizes, which ranged from a $25 cash award to free admission to an NAA technology conference.
The prize winners follow, along with their ideas.
"We expose negatives in a conventional plate-exposure unit and use the water-based developer that comes with the subtractive plate. The developer is environmentally friendly and has no hazardous properties, so it can go down the drain untreated," he explains.
"The biggest benefit of a subtractive plate is, on a cold start, the plates clean up to sellable copies in just over half the usual amount of white start-up waste," he says, "resulting in real savings on start-up newsprint production waste. Plates also clean up almost instantaneously on a warm start, resulting in further savings in white production waste. Tinting and scumming are virtually eliminated."
The NAA Newsprint Guide contains hundreds of ideas to help conserve costly newsprint. To order a copy, call (800) 651-4622 and ask for item number 10030. Price for NAA members is $30.
©1997 Newspaper Association of America. All rights reserved.