3 ways to make your annual report greener (cheaper, too)

SEC requirements aside, there are smarter ways to distribute all that information

U.S. businesses use about 21 million tons of paper yearly. They help make about 750,000 photocopies a day. The amount of paper that gets trashed each year is enough to build a 12-foot wall from Los Angeles to New York.

One culprit may be the annual report. That expensive, 50-something-page, full-color, glossy book that you slave over every year and send to investors worldwide. It’s a necessary evil, required in part by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and by years of tradition, complete with important yearly financial numbers, company information, and lots of pictures and charts.

It is possible, though, to make it less of a burden on the environment and the company bank account. Some companies and nonprofits have started to move away from the traditional annual report to something that delivers all the required information, but is more innovative, better for the environment, and a lot cheaper.

Take Stantec, a sustainable infrastructure and facilities project consulting company. Communicators rethought the company’s annual report last year. It cut down on the number of pages, sent it to fewer people, posted it to its Web site, used recycled paper and vegetable-based inks, and saved almost $60,000.

“We’re trying to be more environmentally friendly with our paper use and cut down on paper use dramatically as well,” says Marguerite Watson, senior writer and annual report project manager at Stantec. “Our annual report doesn’t look different; in fact, we’ve been using vegetable-based inks for two to three years, and it’s no different. The quality is as good as or better than what we’ve done in the past.”

Becoming environmental friendly doesn’t have to cost more or doesn’t look any different—paper and ink technologies have come a long way. Here are three methods to green your own annual report.

1. Put it online, and make fewer copies

Most companies put their annual reports online already, but why not take it one step further and make fewer copies, too?

Stantec printed and sent out about 17,000 copies of its 76-page, two-part annual report in 2007. Last year, it printed and sent out about 90 percent fewer copies after it asked shareholders how they would prefer to view the report.

“We looked at costs of previous annual reports, printing and mailing, and realized we had been spending a lot of money on hard copies,” Watson says. “We wanted to do something about that to be more sustainable, it wasn’t just cost. We were trying to move more toward a paperless office environment, and do more work electronically, so on the 2008 report, we tried to cut down on the number of copies, encourage people to look at it online.”

Instead of automatically sending a copy of the annual report to every shareholder in its address book, Stantec sent out a letter instead, Watson says. The letter explained that the company was trying to be more environmentally friendly and said that people could request, online or by phone, a paper copy of the annual report. It printed only about 2,000 copies of the report at a cost of $28,860 (compared with $86,406 previously), and the rest were available online.

Colleagues “were really very excited that we could actually do that, get people to go and look at it electronically and save that much cost and paper and production,” Watson says. “In the past, it wasn’t an option, but now with the technology, more and more companies doing it. It makes a lot of sense.”

Stantec dramatically curtailed the number of copies it printed and sent to shareholders, but the change doesn’t have to be that dramatic or that quick to have an impact.

Even one or two reports can make a difference. Mr. and Mrs. John Shareholder don’t both need copies of the annual report sent to their house. That’s one fewer report printed and one fewer envelope and stamp. If you can’t go through your address book, try printing a few hundred fewer copies and paying better attention to how they’re used.

Rainforest Alliance couldn’t ditch the 34-page printed version of its annual report altogether because it serves as a sort of organization brochure for the group’s offices worldwide. So it reduced the number of copies it printed. Last year, it went from printing 5,000 copies to 4,500, and it still had enough to go around.

“I think people are becoming more aware,” says Angela Richards Dona, communications coordinator for design and production at Rainforest Alliance. “People just need a little bit of guidance. Paper, most people take for granted; they just don’t think much about it.”

2. Reduce the number of pages

Annual reports are chock full of important information about your company, making it difficult to pare it down and reduce the page count.

Even so, it can be done. This year the nonprofit SuperSibs was looking at increased annual report costs with no company stepping up to donate the requisite funds because of the economic crisis. Download its annual report (pdf).

Amanda Goetz, communications program manager, says she decided to take a look at the organization’s 25-page, full-color report to see what could be done differently. She ended up turning it into a one-page (22 inches by 17 inches), two-color brochure that folds to 5.5 by 8.5 inches and can be sent out to 9,000 donors as-is. The expanded version, which includes the names of donors, is available online.

Last year, the booklet version of the annual report cost $1.25 apiece. This year, the brochures are only 25 cents each. The company uses significantly less paper and doesn’t have to use donated money to create an elaborate annual report. It still includes all of the important information—albeit in a smaller font with less white space, photos, and artwork.

“I think donors will be happy,” Goetz says. “They’ll say, ‘Oh, what’s this? It doesn’t look like something you would get from St. Jude; it’s very unique. I haven’t gotten anything like this in the mail before—it’s something different, it catches the eye.’”

If you’re trying to cut out a few pages, Watson recommends becoming familiar with what the SEC requiresand getting rid of everything else.

This year the company’s looking at ways to cut down page count by removing the report’s business review section. She says Stantec is thinking about replacing the 36 glossy pages of company information with a one-page letter, followed by the 40 pages of financial information. Company data are available online, anyway, and only the financials are required by the SEC.

More and more companies are moving in this direction, Watson says.

“You don’t have glossy representation of what the company does or color shots of employees,” Watson says. “It’s very plain, and you only design the cover. That will cut down production costs way down and the paper use will be almost cut in half.”

3. Use recycled materials

Replacing your regular paper and ink for recycled paper that’s Forest Stewardship Council-certified and made from responsibly managed forests and vegetable ink is perhaps the most simple way to make your annual report more green.

Vegetable inks are made from vegetable oils instead of petroleum. They release fewer volatile organic compounds into the air during printing than petroleum-based ink, and vegetable oil is a renewable resource. Stantec, Rainforest Alliance, and SuperSibs all switched to vegetable-based inks and haven’t seen a difference in quality or cost.

Rainforest Alliance takes it a step further and steers clear of soy-based inks. Dona says soy contributes to deforestation because it takes up forest land with its frequent harvesting comes big infrastructure—the roads, etc., required for transporting the soy.

It’s also important to pick an ink and a paper that mesh well together, Dona says. Certain types of recycled paper can absorb ink, which can increase cost. Recycled papers can come in almost any color, weight, or finish. There are many types and levels of recycled paper, but generally, paper made from some percentage of post-consumer waste is good because it’s repurposed and not placed in a landfill after it’s used.

Recycled paper contains some percentage of pulp from virgin fiber to help hold it together, but if that virgin fiber is sustainably managed, Dona says, it’s better for the ecosystem and for the workers.

Rainforest Alliance has tried many types of recycled papers for its annual report, but have settled, at least this year, on a 10 percent post-consumer waste FSC and SmartWood certified paper. Although sustainable glossy paper is available, the Alliance doesn’t use it, because people don’t find it environmentally friendly.

“You do not have to pay more to print with paper that comes from sustainably managed forests, since you have a choice in many price ranges,” Dona says. “In other words, they have papers to fit all budgets. This is good news, because there really is no good reason not to use paper that is certified!”

Results are in the numbers: The Clean Air Council estimates that one ton of paper made from recycled pulp saves 17 trees, 3 cubic yards of landfill space, 7,000 gallons of water, 4,200 kilowatt hours (enough to heat your home for half year) and 390 gallons of oil.  It also spares the air from 60 pounds of pollutants.