A Sustainability conversation in Barcelona, to be continued in London

Barbara Chaplain - Cimpress, Carlos Lahoz - HP & Steve Lister - Sustainability Consultant

The FuturePrint PodFEST will host a practical sustainability discussion that will look at materials, production, data and collaboration across the print value chain.

Last week at FESPA 2026 in Barcelona, FuturePrint met with Steve Lister, Sustainability Consultant, Barbara Chaplain, Director of Sustainability Product & Packaging at Cimpress, and Carlos Lahoz, head of HP’s Industrial Print Sustainability Strategy to talk through the sustainability discussion planned for FuturePrint PodFEST in London this June.

It was useful because everyone approached the subject from a different place: product, production, technology, materials and sustainability. Very quickly, it became less about sustainability as a message and more about sustainability as a working decision: what changes in the brief, the material, the process and the supply chain, how regulation shapes those choices, and when sustainability is a differentiator rather than simply what customers expect. This will be the basis of the PodFEST discussion.

The overall theme is From Principles to Practice. This connects naturally to the Sustainable Print Manifesto, which was created to move sustainability from shared intent into practical action. The question now is how those principles affect the decisions companies actually have to make: what they specify, what they test, what they produce and how it performs day-to-day in the real world. A material change, for example, is rarely just a material change. It affects testing, colour, performance, customer approval, finishing, cost and end of life. Sustainability has to work technically and commercially.

FuturePrint will lead the session as a group discussion. The aim is to bring different parts of the value chain into the same conversation and look at what helps, what gets in the way and where collaboration can move things forward.

FuturePrint is looking forward to continuing the conversation in London next month, after a useful first discussion in Barcelona. So, watch this space: The FuturePrint PodFEST discussion will be recorded for FuturePrint TV and shared after the London session.