Partners in Sustainability: Brown and Caldwell

In the “Partners in Sustainability” series, we turn the spotlight to our clients, many of whom are setting new standards for social and environmental responsibility in business. All of them, of course, have made the commitment to sustainability by ensuring that their operations are aligned with their values. We invited them to speak directly to the connection between green printing and sustainability.

We continue the series with Brown and Caldwell, a company with a 60-year legacy of environmental stewardship.

About Brown and Caldwell

Headquartered in Walnut Creek, CA, Brown and Caldwell is a full-service environmental engineering and consulting firm with 45 offices and 1500+ professionals across the country. For more than 60 years, their creative designs and progressive solutions have helped scores of municipal, federal, and private agencies sucessfully overcome their most challenging environmental obstacles.

Brown and Caldwell and Sustainability

Brown and Caldwell’s legacy of environmental stewardship goes back to Dave Caldwell, who, since the founding in 1947, insisted that BC’s approach to facility design minimizes energy use. A true visionary, he pioneered and advocated wastewater reuse as early as 1970. Dave’s belief that the needs of society, clients and the environment can co-exist remains an integral part of the company culture.

As the company marks its 60th year, they introduced BC Green: an explicit commitment to delivering sustainable, economically efficient solutions to complex environmental problems. Sustainability – through BC Green – spans and impacts their personal and professional life much like the issue of work/balance. It will also lead to new ways of doing business at Brown and Caldwell, ranging from choices about the materials used and how offices operate to expanding the sustainable services provided to clients.

Printing Green

One factor in making the transition from traditional printing to green printing was the paper quality. The surface quality of recycled papers has improved over the years. The stereotype was that recycled paper was uncoated and had a speckled, grungy look to it. Today’s papers don’t even look like the recycled papers of the past. One of the challenges we faced in going green was being convinced that the quality of online “green printing” was just as good as the conventional way of printing; however, now we have found the biggest benefit to be the cost savings and getting high-quality printing in a matter of days.

Green Printing & Sustainability

Green printing helps us meet our sustainability goals because we can proof soft proofs online, we’re printing on recycled papers, we realize cost savings (by printing online), and we can even get eco-audits. The speedy service has also made life easier!

Thanks to Calvin Ng from Brown and Caldwell for his assistance in providing this information!