Hillis Printing Environmental Overview

Hillis Printing has been a family owned commercial printer in Silicon Valley since 1901- before it was even called Silicon Valley- When orchards were plentiful and plums and apricots were the city's main source of revenue. We are the oldest family-owned commercial printer in San Jose, but don't let that fool you. We keep our materials and processes always up-to-date with nothing but state-of-the-art printing, prepress and bindery equipment. Hillis Printing continually seeks to meet and exceed the demands of our customers and employees by understanding our industries effect on the natural world. Early on we accepted the responsibility to make an effort to reduce our environmental impact. The following principle of sustainable business practices of economic, corporate social responsibility and environmental stewardship have kept Hillis Printing a leader in our print community and ensures our continued viability and growth:

  • We are committed to observing all laws and regulations. We are consistently inspected and permitted.
  • We always take a proactive approach when selecting and sourcing raw materials.
    Plates
    We use a computer to plate process that has no hazardous byproducts
    Paper
    We encourage and have a full selection of recycled sub straights available for our customers needs
    Inks
    We only offer low VOC vegetable & soy based inks
    Solvents
    We are among one of the first bay area shops to go alcohol free and low/no VOC with all of our wetting solutions, cleaning solvents and press washes
    Equipment
    All of our equipment is UL regulated and energy star certified where applicable
  • We aggressively recycle all waste paper and byproducts of our processes according to the law.
  • In 2008 we successfully identified and eliminated our entire hazardous waste stream. All un-recyclable materials captured in our process are classified as non hazardous ink debris and are disposed of according to the law.
  • We have a strict inventory management and control processes maintaining minimum stores of consumables.
  • We proactively educate our customers on all of their “Green Printing Choices” to align our mutual interests in conserving resources and delivering sustainable products and services.
  • Our state of the art printing facility was custom built for our needs streamlining all of our processes and minimizing our carbon footprint.
  • We have plans and/or procedures in place to properly respond, manage, minimize and report the impact of any environmental crisis, incident or emergency. Our safety practices and record are very good having no major injuries or incidents in our history.