A group of around 50 industry figures gathered for the dinner meeting at Club Five Dock in Sydney, where Lawrence's presentation endorsed the view that "printers are the accidental environmentalists".
"The print industry has modernised and in that modernisation process, it has lowered its environmental footprint," he said.
Lawrence (pictured, left, with LIA's Robert Lamont) claimed by 2007, the print industry had become 97% less environmentally damaging than it had been in 1990.
"When people think of 'the environment', they think of trees," he said. "People have a perception of print as a dirty industry and one that wastes trees."
"People see our industry as producing waste. Companies are pushed to cut their carbon footprint by cutting print.
"But if companies cut all their paper, they would only cut their carbon footprint by half a percent," claimed Lawrence.
He devoted part of his presentation to the fact that print had distinct environmental advantages over electronic media.
But Lawrence conceded that despite all the research supporting print's green credentials, the disparate nature of the industry - especially compared with the corporate giants of the IT sector - meant printers faced a difficult task in getting the positive message out to the wider public.