YELLOW Pages demands green thinking.

RR Donnelley, the mega-printers at Flaxby Moor, near Knaresborough, which annually publishes 50 million directories, including Yellow Pages, keeps a close eye on any environmental impact its operation may have.

After all, paper equals trees, which are the oxygen givers of our planet.

Now consider that RR Donnelley uses 80,000 tonnes of paper each year with each of the firm's five presses capable of printing 30,000 64-page sections an hour - and there is a danger that it could make gaps in our forests.

But RR Donnelley is so aware of the problem that it is a candidate for the title of Environmental Business of the Year in the 2004 Evening Press Business Awards.

It ensures that all paper is from managed forests and at least half of it is already recycled.

All its waste paper is recycled and so is all the aluminium and other metal waste.

Pre-press water effluent has been reduced by 86 per cent through recycling and ultrasonic cleaning equipment has replaced traditional, but toxic, solvent baths for soaking.

All end caps and reel wraps are either re-used in-house or are recycled for animal bedding.

About 84 per cent of potential landfill waste is recycled, and efficiencies have slashed energy consumption by six per cent.

These are all reasons why the Flaxby Moor site became the first RR Donnelley plant worldwide to achieve and maintain accreditation to the international environmental standard ISO 1400.

It explains why the company won the Waste Recycling accolade in the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust Awards last year, and gained outstanding achievement awards in the Energy Action and Waste and Recycling categories of the Harrogate Council BAFTERS (Best Action For The Environment Road Show) awards this year.

Updated: 11:32 Monday, September 06, 2004