Our biggest challenge in starting up Something Green was finding an eco-friendly printer that was local, affordable, and had great product quality. Not only did we need a printer to produce our products, but we also wanted to print our business cards, fliers, and envelopes from an environmentally responsible company.
Green Printer
Location: Delta
Technology: Waterless printing process and vegetable inks
Customer Service: Poor
Quality: Average to Good
Green Printer was our primary printer for several months. The staff were friendly and their prices were affordable – they were the cheapest printer we dealt with. Green Printer also blogged about environmental issues and appeared to have a genuine concern about being a green company. However, because of a lack or reliability and inconsistencies in quality we had to switch Green Printer to our backup printer. Turnaround time is 1 week, but because of mis-communication and frequent technology breaks downs, our orders always came 2 to 6 weeks late. Even more disappointingly our orders would often have mistakes like trimming errors or incorrect files printed on the front or back.
Update: We no longer use Green Printer as they stopped responding to email or phone calls.
Jukebox Print Shop
Location: Downtown Vancouver
Technology: Soy inks
Customer Service: Poor
Quality: Unknown
We didn’t get very far with this printer. Based on their website their prices rivaled Green Printer. Our experience with this printer spanned 4 weeks. We emailed asking for a quote and got no reply. Called 2 weeks later and was promised a reply by 2 days. 2 days rolled around with no response, so we emailed them back. Nothing. We called one more time and was promised a reply. We are unfortunately still waiting.
Hemlock
Location: Burnaby
Technology: Multiple systems using non toxic and organic inks
Customer Service: Good
Quality: Very Good
Hemlock is an award winning FSC certified printer. From paper, inks, resource consumption and green advocacy, their efforts to be a sustainable company far exceed the efforts of every printer we contacted. Of course, they were also the biggest printer we worked with and because of this they could not accommodate our low volume printing requirements at an affordable price. Hemlock was the most expensive printer, but they also had the best quality.
Mills Basic
Location: Vancouver
Technology: Vegetable inks
Customer Service: Poor
Quality: Unknown
A family operated printing company. Our contact was very knowledgeable about the different types of environmentally friendly paper. They were expensive, being beaten out only by Hemlock. As for customer service, they sometimes took weeks to get back to us, and when we were in the process of ordering samples from them, the whole staff went on vacation without any warning. We decided against going for a printer that was family operated and sometimes difficult to get a hold of.
Linxprint
Location: Vancouver
Technology: Wax based organic ink
Customer Service: Very Good
Quality: Good
Linxprint is our current primary printer. Like Hemlock, they are FSC certified and exceed regulatory standards with reduced paper consumption and client education of environment impact. Linxprint’s customer service is the best, with our rep responding to our emails often in the same hour. Also they are fast! Our orders are always ready within 48 hours.
That’s the whole list of green printers we worked with. How do they stack up compared to traditional printers? As a graphic designer I have dealt with dozens of traditional printers in my career (My printer of choice being TPH for the longest time). In print quality, Hemlock and Linxprint products are indistinguishable from traditional printers. As for cost, organic printers are generally more expensive. Green Printer was the only Printer that was less expensive than traditional printers.
We’ve only been with Linxprint for a month, and so far we love them. Our fingers are crossed that our long search for a Vancouver local green printer has come to an end.
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