Leed and the Environment

At Leed we are very focused on reducing the environmental impact of our production processes for fabric and materials samples, as well as within our fulfillment operation.

We’re reducing our ecological footprint through:

Engineering

We are constantly improving our products and processes to reduce waste. After all, less waste generated means less waste to manage.

Recycling

We currently recycle more than 80% of our production waste, which mainly consists of paper based products. And we constantly strive to implement creative ways to reduce and recycle the remainder of our waste materials.

Production of Small Quantities

Smaller production runs mean less waste. Leed’s fast turnaround, small quantity sample manufacturing allows you to keep smaller inventories, reducing the need for discarding large volumes of samples due to obsolescence.

On the fulfillment side, through smart forecasting of your sales channels’ needs for material samples and sales literature, Leed can keep your inventories as low as possible, greatly reducing the waste (and cost) associated with discarding outdated sales material.

Reduced Transportation

Transportation can be one of the biggest sources of waste. Our raw material storage, sample production and fulfillment operation are all in the same facility, which means:

  • No more wasted fuel (and emissions) moving materials and products between different locations.
  • Lower inventories, reducing waste due to obsolescence.

Digital Printing

Traditional offset printing can produce a lot of waste. An offset CMYK press run may use as many as 1,000 sheets during setup just to get the colors and densities right. Production quantities are often high to achieve a desirable unit cost, and the resulting larger inventories are at risk of becoming obsolete and having to be scrapped.

The setup required for our digital CMYK printing processes is dramatically less than for traditional offset printing. This reduces setup waste and allows for smaller runs, reducing inventories and avoiding obsolescence.

No-Waste Printing

For small items such as memo sample tickets and ID tags, we suggest our No-Waste printing method, which is ideal for single color printing on uncoated card stocks. If additional colors are required, we can do combination printing of static and variable data.

Eco-Friendly Print Protection

Sample companies and printers often use film lamination to protect printed material from scratching, scuffing and fingerprints. The films are usually polyethylene or polyurethane, which are heavily dependent on petroleum production.

As an alternative, we recommend our proprietary LeedGuard Print Protection, which is a 100% solids-based, biodegradable, eco-friendly surface. LeedGuard offers technical quality advantages as well, including improved surface hardness compared to most film laminates, and zero color distortion.