Leading printing vendors joined forces today to unveil a new green standard scheme for printing supplies. The scheme is designed to help customers make environmentally-aware choices about the cartridges and toner they purchase.

Called the IT Eco Declaration for Print Supplies, the international standard brings together criteria from a range of similar schemes in Scandinavia and the Far East, and requires manufacturers to make available a range of environmental information for their products, including cartridge weight, whether the supplies contain hazardous substances, and information on manufacturing processes, material selection and recycling policies.

Firms signing up to the voluntary declaration will have to pay a small fee and sign a contract with Swedish IT trade group IT-Företagen, which will provide third-party control of the scheme. Signatories will be required to provide compliance information on request and immediately correct any area of non-compliance or face exclusion from the scheme.

The working group behind the new scheme included industry heavyweights HP, Canon, Sharp and Ricoh, and hopes to gain support from the rest of the industry.

“The Eco Declaration is a product of real industry cooperation and a shared desire to keep customers properly informed," said Ylva Hambraeus Björling of IT-Företagen. "All companies involved in the printing supplies industry will want to embrace the chance to display their environmental credentials in a meaningful way, the better to serve the customer.”

Hans Wendschlag, Nordic environmental programme manager at HP and chair of the Eco Declaration working group, said that the scheme will provide customers with real assurance that the environmental information they are given is accurate and that their suppliers are committed to the highest environmental standards. “The IT Eco Declaration for Print Supplies is an industry-led initiative with teeth, as non-compliance can lead to exclusion from the system,” he said.