OUTPUT

Following backlash from the printing and paper industries, Toshiba has cancelled its National No-Print Day. Two Sides is among the organisations against the campaign, describing it as 'greenwashing'.

"It appears that the widespread criticism that has greeted Toshiba's ill-conceived 'National No-Print Day' has taken the company by surprise," says Martyn Eustace, Two Sides director.

"For an organisation with an invested interest in print to advocate 'no print' is clearly ill advised but to pretend to be on some sort of a mission to save trees and therefore the environment is just nonsense from an organisation which makes products with their own significant environmental footprint."

Opposition included the Printing Industries of America, whose president Michael Makin had a 'lengthy conversation' with Bill Melo, Toshiba USA's senior vice-president of marketing, services and solutions, where Melo stressed that National No Print Day was aimed at offices, not commercial printing.

"My retort to Mr Melo was that if this was truly the case, his campaign should have been more specific," says Makin. "It was not promoted as 'let's save office waste day' but rather National No-Print Day."

He adds: "Thank you to everyone who joined in our effort to protest this initiative."