Renewable Electricity – Severnprint was the first commercial customer of Ecotricity in 1995. Unusually for a business of our size we were buying wholesale electricity at the time and we had the necessary metering in order to buy directly from Ecotricity. At the time Ecotricity was a newly formed company with limited renewable electricity available. We began by buying electricity generated from gas from the nearby landfill site at Hempsted in Gloucester. As Ecotricity grew it had access to a larger renewable electricity supply with windpower generators sites over the whole country. Severnprint continues to buy all of its electricity from Ecotricity and buys only electricity generated entirely from renewable sources.  

Ecotricity wind turbine under construction - Watch the time-lapse film of the building of the turbines at Avonmouth docks. 

Choosing a suitable environmentally aware paper. 65% of all paper bought by Severnprint is recycled. This is a huge achievement and helps to build demand for recycled papers which in turn encourages the supply of recycled papers and investment in the mills that produce it. 

To help in our customers choice of paper we have developed a paper swatch which contains a range of recycled and FSC certified new papers from several paper makers and merchants. In order to be included in the swatch papers must have a content of at least 50% post consumer recycled content (many are 100% recycled) and may also be FSC certified. Certain FSC certified new papers are also included which recognises that the paper comes from sustainable sources and provides traceability all the way back to the source of the forestry used to produce the paper pulp.