Tampa Bay Times Environmental Standards

The Tampa Bay Times is committed to environmental stewardship and business practices that ensure the long-term viability of our community’s natural resources. We are dedicated to the efficient use of our source materials, maximizing recycling opportunities and reducing waste stream inputs. Beyond legal requirements, we look for ways to reduce emissions, lower costs and continue to be a good corporate citizen.

Newsprint procurement
The Tampa Bay Times recognizes that business leadership and long-term success must consider the environment, including the world's forest ecosystems. The Tampa Bay Times fully supports responsible forest management practices that protect biodiversity and ecosystem integrity.  Both concepts provide long-term social and economic benefits to communities and create a climate of operational certainty.  

• Maximize Recycled Content: The Tampa Bay Times will give preference to paper with high-recycled content and specifically post-consumer waste content, and encourage its suppliers to continuously maintain, improve and expand the availability of recycled content in papers.
• Forest Certification: The Tampa Bay Times encourages the adoption of sustainable forest management, and when purchasing newsprint with virgin fiber, will give purchasing preference to fiber originating from Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified operations.
• Avoid Controversial Sources: The Tampa Bay Times will work with suppliers and organizations like Canopy: www.canopyplanet.org to ensure that we purchase paper that does not come from endangered forests, endangered species habitat, and illegally logged forests. At anytime, if we find that our paper is coming from these areas, we will engage with our suppliers to change practices and/or re-evaluate our relationship with them.

Newsprint conservation
The Tampa Bay Times actively works to reduce newsprint consumption, reduce waste and promote recycling.  This is done, in part, by

•   Improving efficiency in paper use, from physical layout design, to the production, distribution and circulation processes.
•  Promoting continuous technical advances in paperweight reduction, fiber use efficiency, and printing methods to minimize process waste.\
• Supporting the use and development of appropriate technology platforms that help reduce paper consumption.
• Recycling all newsprint waste and return papers.  About 75% of our recycled content (return waste) is sent back to the SPFT recycled newsprint mill in Dublin, GA.  The other quarter (press waste) goes to a vendor that handles other recycled paper grades including cardboard, newsprint wrappers, and coated sheet waste.  
•  Encouraging staffers to bring newspapers and magazines from home to recycle at the printing plant or to recycle through their municipality’s recycling program.
•  Reducing waste in the printing process through awareness, maintenance and analyzing performance metrics. Currently, we measure success in rolls per break, waste percentage and productivity per press.

Energy conservation
The Tampa Bay Times actively looks for cost effective ways to reduce energy consumption at all our facilities.  A partial list includes…

•   Reducing our environmental footprint, by using thermal storage systems to supply our air conditioning chilled water systems at the Printing Plant and downtown St. Petersburg building. The ice storage system reduces our peak demand on electricity.
•   Using reclaimed water where available for cooling towers for air conditioning and landscape watering.
•   Considering energy consumption as a component of any equipment  purchasing decisions. For example, we recently bought a boiler and we asked the environmental questions to see if we can align cost and efficiency.
•   Replacing lighting in our facilities with newer energy saving alternatives (metal halide to sodium; T-8 to T-5 florescent; and looking at applications for LED).  Also, installing timers on lights where reasonable and safe.
•   Investing in technology that reduces newsprint, ink and waste.  Examples include; press controls that reduce ink and water consumption in the printing process, without compromising the high quality of the reproduction.  Adding technology that reduces color ink consumption through a color correcting process, without detracting from print reproduction quality.  Installed energy-saving AC motors and drives on 21 units and 3 folders.  We also developed energy saving technology which automatically shuts down power to reelstand brakes when not in use.
•   Adopting early and advancing ink reclamation technology which converts slop ink into reusable black ink.
•  Using solar power in one of our buildings to provide hot water. The system is supported by natural gas, as needed.

Other:

•  Committing to use (the more expensive) soy-based inks and have done so for many years.  It produces higher quality, less rub off and is more environmentally friendly than petroleum-based inks.
•  Reducing the number of miles that our transportation staffers drive, and, in turn, the amount of diesel fuel our trucks use by just over 50% since 2002.
• Encouraging staff to help make a difference.  A group of Times staffers meet regularly to evaluate and implement eco-friendly measures.  The team has begun providing monthly conservation tips on the company intranet site, produces a quarterly newsletter, and is starting to get involved with like minded community events.