Look around your workplace, and you’ll likely find plenty of printed material, from business cards to brochures to books. Printing words and images on paper may seem like one of the more environmentally benign things your company does. But that isn’t necessarily the case. If you examine the life cycle of printed matter — from turning trees into paper through the witch’s brew of chemicals involved — professional printing takes on a decidedly non-green hue.
The explosion of web and digital technology doesn’t seem to have changed things — as one pundit put it. The paperless office has turned out to be about as practical as the paperless bathroom! But if you still have to print, go green with digiprint.
Green printing is on a roll, moving beyond small, do-good companies and activist groups to larger corporations and government agencies that have mandates to purchase greener goods and services. As demand for green printing has grown, so too has the number of printers offering such services — or, at least, claiming to.
It’s about time. The mechanics of most types of printing haven’t changed much over the past half-century. Lithography — the method typically used to print books, leaflets, Business stationery and catalogues, employ plates which are used to apply ink to paper. Typically, the process involves a variety of inks, solvents, acids, resins, lacquers, dyes, driers, extenders, modifiers, varnishes, shellacs, and other solutions. Only a few of these ingredients end up directly on the printed page. The balance are used to produce films, printing plates, or proofs, or to clean printing plates or presses.
Many of the ingredients are toxic: silver, lead, chromium, cadmium, toluene, chloroform, methylene chloride, barium-based pigments, and acrylic copolymers. And that’s not all. Chlorine bleaching of paper is linked to cancer-causing water pollutants. Waste inks and solvents are usually considered hazardous. Bindings, adhesives, foils, and plastic bags used in printing or packaging printed material can render paper unrecyclable.
And you thought it was just ink on paper.
I Ink, Therefore I Am
Not everyone defines “green printing” the same way. There is no standard or certification for what makes a printer — or a given project — green. For example, some printers use conventional techniques for most customers, breaking out the recycled paper and soy-based inks only when a customer asks. But digiprint go all-out as a matter of course.
At digiprint we use high post-consumer recycled content, non-chlorine-bleached papers where possible, Vegetable based litho inks, recyclable polyester plates, HP Latex based solvent free signage inks and digital printing using Konica energy star rated digital presses as standard.
On top of that, our production sites are as green as can be with eco energy machines, LED low energy lighting, green energy tariffs, and waste recycling as standard.
And what about price? Green printing can cost a little more — but it doesn’t have to. After doing a cost comparison between four similar high street printers, the slight cost increase on some products to go green with digiprint was so insignificant it is worth it, and some prices were even cheaper!
In fact, at digiprint we will help you find ways to make projects more economical. We spend a lot of time educating customers to show them that green printing isn’t just more environmentally responsible, it’s better quality and more affordable. By taking the time to show them the least wasteful way to design and produce projects, we often save clients’ money over conventional printing costs. We win a lot of business that way.”
Image Consciousness
At digiprint we use the most eco-friendly papers available; reduce or eliminate toxic chemicals, waste ink, and solvents; use soy or other vegetable inks without any price premium; educate customers about how to reduce a project’s environmental impact; and provide safe working conditions for employees, including using the most advanced air-filtration systems and lighting.
Green printing done the right way!