Shine on Harvest Moon
MEET OUR FINALISTS: BEST GREEN BUSINESS
From the time when the Harvest Moon was only a twinkle in the imagination of its owner, Turloch Dolan, the Killeshandra printing business has had an environmental focus.
“From day one Harvest Moon has always been very environmentally conscious, well before ‘green’ became a buzzword.”
A quarter of a century later and a move from one side of Killeshandra, to its current location across from Lakeland Dairies, the printing company is aiming to reach its zero waste target by 2030. Much of those gains have been achieved through technical advances shifting from lithographic machinery to mainly digital, and Turloch is hopeful further progress elsewhere will push them over the line.
Clearly a print company - like newspapers - relies on trees as a source of paper. How can that be environmentally-minded, you may wonder.
“When a paper mill buys a tree and turns it into pulp, they have to plant 10 saplings to replace that one tree. That’s what is known as sustainable forests and that is where we buy our paper from,” explains Turloch, noting how legislation has caught up with them, meaning the industry now must use only certified sustainable forestry.
He flags the “only downside” is the ships transporting the paper to Ireland run on diesel, but he hastens to add these giant vessels are also converting to solar energy.
Harvest Moon has endeavoured to keep waste to a minimum. “We had five green bins for recycling each week; we’re down to one green bin per week now. Paper waste is down to almost zero now because digital has really cut down on paper waste for us. Our ink waste is way way down, our oil waste is way down, and our energy waste is way down.”
The installation of solar panels has put Harvest Moon within touching distance of achieving all their environmental goals.
“The idea of our solar investment is that would be to try to go completely green by 2030 - that would include our vehicles and everything.
“All we need to do to be fully green now is to put in a charging station or two for our vehicles and then buy an electric van, and we’re nearly there.”
Turloch is honoured to be shortlisted and share a category with such a big company as Wilton Waste.
“I feel every small business can make a big difference. Individually it might not be a whole heap but if there’s thousands of small businesses doing it at the same time it’s a big difference.
“We can’t believe we are in the same category as a company as large as Wilton Waste. That makes us very happy because it just highlights how two different sizes of business can make a big difference.”
CONTACT US
Harvest Moon Print & Design is based on Main Street, Killeshandra.
Call 049-4364904.