Recently I found the ideal eco-friendly printer for the instruction booklets: Royal Printers in New Westminster, BC. They import Sugar Sheet: paper made from a waste by-product of the sugar cane industry. No forests were cut down to make this paper – how amazing is that?! And the performance, cost and recyclability are the same as paper from trees.
I’d already bought a pack of Sugar Sheet from Staples. Turns out Royal Printer supplies them. They bring it in by the container load directly from the paper mill to supply local stores as well as their own printing business.
Chelsea Gieschen, whose granddad started Royal Printers in 1932, gave us a tour of the print shop. It’s way bigger than it looks from the outside. She took us down two flights into the ‘dungeon’ where the older print machines are located. I wanted to see the machine that folds and saddle-stitches the booklets. It was a mammoth-long contraption.
Chelsea wasn’t interested in the printing business until five years ago when Sugar Sheet was introduced. The eco-friendliness of it caught her attention and she joined her brother, father and uncle in the business. They can even tell me how many trees I’ve saved by using Sugar Sheet (maybe a branch or two so far).
Feels good to know I've printed the garden activity signs instruction booklet for you without cutting down trees.