Our latest project is something a little different, spotlighting not one of the great brands that work with us, but an environmentally-sympathetic expansion of PressOn’s own taxi wrap service.
In collaboration with London electric taxi company Sherbet and utilising Metamark’s new MetaStream recycling programme – now offered to clients at PressOn – we set out to celebrate our latest step towards becoming a fully carbon neutral company by 2030, with a series of impactful and – most importantly- recyclable taxi graphics.
Taxi wraps using MetaStream are an ideal way to make a big impression with a minimal environmental impact. In this project, we turned our expertise in the design, print, installation and removal of large format print to the production of six taxi liveries that demonstrate the benefits of sustainable print for brands looking to reduce their waste and minimise their carbon footprint.
What is MetaStream?
While it’s easy to focus on the inks and machinery involved in the printing process, substrates (the materials being printed on) are just as important in both practical and creative terms. For large format print specialists like PressOn, this makes substrate suppliers a key part of the puzzle when creating the most effective – and lowest impact – final product for our clients.
Metamark is a materials manufacturer and distributor that is based in the UK. In order to help print suppliers and brands to achieve their sustainability goals, they have created MetaStream, which takes Metamark materials used in fleet livery and commercial branding, and recycles them into new products which can themselves be recycled again. This circular economy means that no materials end up in landfill or incinerated.
The Print
Taking Sherbet’s traditional Hackney cab (complete with modern electric engine), PressOn used our cutting-edge machinery to print six liveries on the UK’s first fully recyclable self-adhesive vinyl. This process involved careful design to account for the unique shape of the cab and printing pieces in various parts, that our experienced installation team could then use like puzzle pieces to perfectly wrap the taxi and achieve a seamless finish.
In addition to Metamark’s low impact vinyl, we also used (as we do wherever possible) HP’s water-based inks, a breakthrough in ink formulation that is free of UV reactive chemistries and at the forefront of environmentally sympathetic ink technology. Similarly, the protective coatings we use (for projects where the print needs to be particularly long-lasting and durable) are also water-based.
This change in formulation, while being more environmentally sound, also represents no downgrade in print quality – producing rich and highly saturated colours that get noticed. In this particular project, it was great for the team to produce work in PressOn’s signature shades of yellow and blue, with some small-format, informational design making it inside the taxis, complementing the large format design on their exteriors.
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Sustainability has been at the top of our agenda at PressOn for a long time now, and it was fantastic to showcase a new, low-impact product we will be offering to all of our clients going forward. It is exciting to see the developments in our industry which not only push at the technological boundaries, but ensure we can take better care of our planet and, as an industry, become part of the solution.
If you are interested in using MetaStream in an upcoming project, don’t hesitate to get in touch with one of the team today.
