Our story - Ethical Print Co.

In 2005 Sonja was thrilled to get her first graphic design job at a small Snap Printing store on the outskirts of Brisbane. Seeing her designs come to life in a tactile way, she immediately fell in love with printing and thought about how she would enjoy running her own shop one day.

Mentored by her kind boss and the owner of the business (the only other person who worked there!), Sonja learned everything there is to know about the print business. She went on to work for Worldwide online printing and has continued to focus on offering sustainable print solutions throughout her graphic design career over the past 17+ years.

Fast forward to 2023 and Sonja, with the help of her business partner, Caitlin, has built a successful and award-winning print and digital design agency – Ethical Design Co. EDCo. services medium – large ethical organisations, NGOs, universities, and private companies that have a focus on sustainability, social change, and innovation. Sonja and Caitlin realised early on that the success of many of their client projects came down to beautiful and sustainable print solutions. From this, the Ethical Print Co. brand was born; permitting them to offer these eco-friendly print solutions to a much wider audience, regardless of who the designer is.

Ethical Print Co. now manages the printing for multiple non-profits, community organisations and purpose-driven companies around Australia.

Did you know?

4bn kg

Approximately 4 billion kilograms of ink is used for printing around the world every year. Source.

5% CO2

The pulp and paper industry accounts for about 5% of the worlds emissions and uses about 4% of the world’s energy. Source.

28m ha

Since 2016, an average of 28 million hectares have been cut down every year. That’s one football field of forest lost every single second around the clock. Source.

Why the focus on ethical customers and practices?

When Sonja joined the print world she was surprised by how much waste is created by printing and soon became emotionally impacted by what this would mean on a global scale.

After some digging, Sonja realised it’s not the fault of print shops – who generally have good recycling and waste removal processes – the root issue is in consumer culture and the nature of the marketing and advertising system.

Back in 2005, it was still very common for businesses to print high volumes of flyers for mail drops. Every time Sonja churned one of these out, she couldn’t ignore the fact that most of them would go straight into the bin. To understand this better, Sonja went back to university to study sustainability and later, design anthropology. She read many books and learned all the depressing statistics about deforestation and paper pulp manufacturing. She also learned what was driving this destruction on a cultural level and how she can try and put a stop to it to give the world a chance to breathe before it’s completely ruined.

As a graphic designer, Sonja felt partly responsible for the problem, but she also realised she had one of the best tools in her arsenal to contribute toward a fix – the ability to send visual messages to the masses at scale. What would happen if she pledged to ONLY design and print work that is for ethical clients and important social causes, and focus on sustainable outcomes while doing so?

While Sonja was on her journey to becoming one of Australia’s most recognised sustainable graphic designers, Caitlin was on the other side of Melbourne studying a post-graduate degree in international community development and gaining experience in the non-profit and NGO sectors as a human rights and environmental activist. Soon after meeting in 2017, Sonja and Caitlin realised they could combine their skills and passion to create a design agency that truly cares about making a difference and reducing its carbon footprint. With a business model built around planet before profit, Ethical Design Co. is pioneering sustainable design practices and principles here in Australia, and inspiring young designers around the world to do better (check out our Sustainable Design Course).

Our mission to ensuring sustainable design and printing is a mainstream practice is ongoing. At Ethical Print Co., we have made a promise to do all that we can to help Australia get there.