Friday Tip – Sustainability Edition

Feb 13
3 min read

What Happens to Print Waste (and How Thoughtful Design Reduces It)

Brief overview (for skimmers): Print waste isn’t just trim—reprints are often the biggest hidden waste. Clean paper offcuts are recyclable, and ink/toner doesn’t stop paper from being recycled.

Paper recycling is also one of the most successful systems when paper stays clean and sorted.

The biggest wins come from thoughtful design: choosing sizes that use press sheets efficiently, building files correctly to avoid reprints, and using coating or lamination only when it solves a real durability problem.

Walk through any print shop, and you’ll see the obvious waste: trim strips, offcuts, stacks beside the cutter.

That’s normal. Finishing creates trim because print needs bleed, clean edges, and consistent final sizes.

But the waste that hurts most usually isn’t the trim you can see.

It’s the reprint waste you didn’t plan for.

Where Print Waste Comes From

Most print waste is created during finishing:

Sheets are trimmed down to the final size
Bleed is cut off to avoid white edges
Setup sheets are used to dial in alignment and colour

Those offcuts are predictable. Which means they can be handled properly.

The Waste Nobody Plans For: Reprints

A reprint isn’t just “printing it again.”

It can mean:

Re-running the full quantity
Re-cutting and re-finishing
Re-booking production time
Re-shipping (sometimes rush)

And the cause is often avoidable:

Last-minute content changes after approval

This is where thoughtful print planning saves the most material—and the most time.

What Happens to Ink and Toner in Recycling?

Printed paper can still be recycled.

Ink and toner don’t “ruin” paper for recycling. During recycling, paper is pulped, and the ink/toner separates from the fibres and is removed through standard de-inking steps. The fibres are what recyclers want.

And it’s worth saying plainly: paper recycling is one of the most successful recycling systems—when it’s used properly. Clean, sorted paper is exactly what that system is built for.

So yes—printed paper is still recyclable paper.

Coated Paper: Still Often Recyclable (But Keep It Clean)

Coated paper is common in commercial print—gloss, matte, silk—because it looks good and holds detail well.

In most recycling streams, coated paper remains recyclable. Where it gets tricky isn’t the coating so much as what else is added to it or what the paper is mixed with (food contamination, adhesives, mixed materials).

From a production standpoint, the best thing you can do is keep waste clean and separated so it stays a good candidate for recycling.

Design With Purpose: Size Choices That Reduce Trim Waste

This is one of the most practical sustainability moves designers can make—and almost nobody talks about it.

Your finished size determines how efficiently we can “impose” your piece onto a parent sheet. Some sizes nest cleanly. Some sizes produce significant scrap.

Example mindset:

A small tweak to the finished size can mean more pieces per sheet
More pieces per sheet means less paper consumed and less trim produced
It can also reduce labour (fewer cuts, fewer piles, fewer handling steps)

This isn’t about compromising design. It’s about designing with awareness:

If the piece doesn’t need to be a custom odd size, don’t force it
Ask your printer early: “Is there a size close to this that runs cleaner on your sheet?”

That single question can reduce waste across the entire run.

The Real Trade-Off: Lamination and Coating

Here’s the honest part: some finishes make recycling harder. That includes lamination and certain film coatings, which bond paper to plastic layers.

But that doesn’t make them “wrong.”

In the real world, lamination or coating often prevents bigger waste, damage, replacements, and reprints.

Use lamination or coating when it solves a problem, like:

Pieces handled constantly (menus, reference sheets, counter cards)
Moisture exposure, scuffing, and abrasion
Field guides, jobsite sheets, anything that gets folded and abused
Anything where a ruined piece means you’re printing it again next month

A laminated item that lasts a year can be more responsible than an uncoated one that gets trashed and reprinted repeatedly.

That’s the trade: recyclability vs durability. The thoughtful approach is to choose the finish based on the job’s real-life conditions. Print creates waste. Some products—especially laminated ones—aren’t designed to be easily recycled because they’re designed to last.

The thoughtful approach isn’t “don’t laminate.”It’s: laminate with purpose and run production in a way that reduces waste elsewhere.

Bottom Line

Print creates waste. Some of that is normal trim. The bigger waste usually comes from avoidable reprints and poor planning.

The thoughtful approach isn’t “don’t laminate” or “never use coated stock.” It’s: design with purpose, choose sizes that run efficiently, prep files correctly to avoid reprints, and use coating or lamination when it actually solves a durability problem.

That’s the Sustainability Edition Friday Tip.