The Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner
We all know how important bees are for the planet’s sustainability, but this has to be a first. Paper and packaging company DS Smith is using bees to monitor natural habitats at thirteen of its packaging plants in France. The question is why?

DS Smith is a massive company supplying fibre-based paper and packaging products across the globe. It is working with Apilab, a specialist in biomonitoring using bees. Again, why? The answer is because biomonitoring using bees supports DS Smith’s sustainability policies.

Changes in the local ecosystem are a way to measure industry’s impact on local ecosystems. Having a few beehives in your neighbourhood is a way of understanding more about the health of the local environment. DS Smith is a huge company so they can work at a scale most small printing companies wouldn’t consider. But using bees to provide some sort of early warning system for environmental impact doesn’t necessarily depend on scale.

Apilab is an Argentinian company with outlets all over central and south America providing veterinary health and nutrition products. This includes various products to control Varroa mite, one of the nastier parasites that attack bees, as well as bee foods and supplements. Apilab is following the European Union’s INSIGNIA Protocol, developed by an international collaboration of eleven organisations in ten European countries. The protocol uses pollen analysis to detect pollutants and similar nasties.

The INSIGNIA protocol environmental monitoring tool detects pesticides, heavy metals, air pollutants and microplastics in pollen and nectar collected by honeybees. All of these can be deadly for honeybees, but the protocol allows levels to be monitored before things get that bad: besides nectar and pollen, bees also collect other things such as plant pathogens and pesticides. Apilab supplies its APIStrip to DS Smith for its hives. They are hung between the frames of beeswax in the hive and can periodically be analysed for pesticide and other residues.

For printers, from signmakers to commercial printers, having a few beehives in the carpark is not really feasible. But if you are a larger company with access to local open land or a suitable rooftop, it might be worth getting into biodiversity mapping. You can get APIstrips and analysis from companies like Apilab, so becoming a beekeeper will give you a means to measure industrial impact on local ecosystems. This supports your environmental policies, including the goals of the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). 

DS Smith’s thirteen sites range from rural and green spaces, through to urban environments. But these sites are just a handful of the 500 sites worldwide participating in Apilab’s international biomonitoring project. Printers who want to add a new dimension to their sustainability strategy might want to get involved.

***

This article was produced by the Verdigris Project, an industry initiative intended to raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. This weekly commentary helps printing companies keep up to date with environmental standards, and how environmentally friendly business management can help improve their bottom lines. Verdigris is supported by the following companies: Agfa Graphics, EFI, Fespa, Fujifilm, HP, Kodak, Miraclon, Ricoh, Unity Publishing and Xeikon.

Please also include the Verdigris logo and a link to this website. If you don’t already have our logos, you can get them by downloading the “Publishers Bundle”. And don’t forget terms of the Creative Commons license at the footer of the site. Enjoy!