China Extends Green Printing to Bills and Vouchers with New Joint Notice

Environmental awareness has helped make green printing a primary development path for the printing sector. Following three years of rollout, China's green printing efforts have yielded results and are now being extended into bill printing. The state recently released the Notice on Implementing Green Printing for Bills and Vouchers.

The State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the Certification and Accreditation Administration of China jointly issued the Notice, laying out work related to green printing for bills and vouchers.

The Notice sets the scope to include tax invoices, fiscal bills, customs documents, bank bills and other commercial bills, as well as various payment vouchers and securities. Starting in 2013, local regions are to promote green printing for bills and vouchers; by the end of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan period, government-procured printed bills and vouchers should basically achieve green printing; other types are to be guided and encouraged to gradually adopt green printing.

The Notice specifies that printing enterprises making a green printing self-declaration but failing to print bills and vouchers to standard will be subject to blacklist management. If a green printing certification body issues a false certification conclusion, or an inspector arbitrarily adds or reduces procedures set by certification rules, the certification and accreditation supervision authority will investigate and penalize the matter under relevant regulations. Local administrative departments may not charge enterprises any fees related to green printing under any name.

The Notice states that implementing green printing for bills and vouchers should help ensure the environmental safety of taxation, finance, commerce and other national economic activities, reduce harmful substances in printed bills and vouchers that the public and printing personnel contact daily, and lower pollutant emissions during printing.

The four authorities jointly formed a leading group for implementing green printing for bills and vouchers, with an office under it dedicated to organizing and coordinating the implementation.

Source: China Packaging Network (pack.cn), original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-361858.html