The Sustainable Green Printing Partnership (SGP), Sayville, N.Y., recently announced a pilot project to expand its certification program beyond the United States and Canada.
SGP has been successfully holding all audits virtually for more than a year. Using this method, the organization can expand internationally, allowing printers and industry suppliers worldwide to achieve SGP certification, according to the organization. Through its cloud-based SGP Impact Tracker, information for a virtual audit is shared with SGP’s independent auditors.
“SGP certified facilities must renew their certification every two years,” says Wendy Nadan, SGP lead auditor. “In 2018, SGP released the SGP Impact Tracker which helps facilities monitor sustainability performance over time and benchmarking efforts against an aggregate of other facilities. With enhancements, the Tracker provided a virtual audit solution for the current global situation. The new features of the Impact Tracker inspired us to rethink how we could extend the SGP certification to countries outside of North America. From the initial certification planning meeting to the completion of document review including photographic evidence, all can be accomplished virtually with the local sustainability team. Each facility can meet the expectations of the audit as if an SGP auditor were physically on-site.”
With its sustainability management system and annual improvement projects, SGP certified facilities are industry leaders in providing sustainable printing and independent validation of their claims for a sustainable supply chain, according to the organization. SGP certification is given to facilities meeting the standards of the criteria developed by SGP.
“We believe the flexibility of the virtual audit provides an opportunity for facilities worldwide to validate their sustainability programs through SGP,” says Marci Kinter, SGP co-founder, SGP Technical Committee chair and PRINTING United Alliance representative. “SGP has had a number of requests from printers in Asia and Europe to get certified. With the power of our SGP Impact Tracker and our revised certification criteria, SGP will be able to test the feasibility of extending its certification to the worldwide market.” — D.S.
