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 Robert Rodriguez prints most of his projects on recycled paper, but his sustainability crusade doesn’t stop there. He also seeks out safe, chemical-free inks and low-energy, low-waste printing presses. Rodriguez is the manager of Paper Tiger, an independent, environmentally focused printing company in Santa Fe, NM. The shop is one of many environmentally focused printing companies around the country. Most are trying to green their complete printing operations—and to educate customers to demand sustainability when choosing a commercial printer.
“We think about the entire process from beginning to end. It’s not just about the final product,” Rodriguez said. For the printing industry, printing processes and ink choices have more significant environmental impacts than the paper itself. The life-cycle eco-footprint of a box of business cards or stack of corporate reports can be high, if not mitigated.
Offset May Be Off-Putting
Good desktop printers start at less than $100, so few businesses or people are running to the corner print shop for basic jobs. They typically need professionals for better color reproduction or glossy, top-notch brochures and other items. A commercial printer can use an offset press to reproduce images or create high-quality documents that could never be matched with an office printer. However, all that quality comes with a lot of wasted energy and materials:
- Typical offset presses use reams of paper testing the color and calibrating the ink. All the paper is hopefully recycled, but the process is still wasteful. Removing the ink, shredding the paper into its basic fibers and adding new dyes all require energy.
- The traditional prepress process also involves heavy chemical inputs, many of which are toxic.
- Projects normally go through plastic film and metal plates, sometimes using toxic mercury, long before the first brochure or book cover comes off the press.
Building a Better Printer
Digital presses are a more eco-friendly alternative, but most don’t offer the same quality or color reproduction. Rodriguez has the answer. He said Paper Tiger was one of the first printing companies to buy the HP Indigo press. It is a high-quality, six-color offset printer, but burns no plates, uses no chemicals and doesn’t waste paper getting up to speed. HP Indigo promises to reproduce perfect Pantone colors on the first page of a job, and can use soy-based inks with no mercury, arsenic or iodine. “We wanted to help the world—and support the customer base who wants to help the world go green,” Rodriguez said.
Think Ink
Green Printer, with locations in Wyoming, Ontario and British Columbia, uses only vegetable-based inks specifically designed to print without mixing in water and isopropyl alcohol, as with traditional printing. The company calculates the water savings for each project. It also tallies the number of trees spared by using recycled papers and the amount of power its energy-effcient printers save. It then provides the customer with an “eco-savings” report for each printing project.
Indigo Ink in Maryland also uses vegetable inks, and it powers its facility with wind turbines. Bacchus Press in San Francisco does the next best thing by buying carbon offsets for all of the energy it consumes. It also uses vegetable- and soy-based inks.
Only as Good as the Paper
The paper choices presented in the binder at a print shop each use different dyes, whiteners, brighteners and coatings. In turn, each component has a distinct environmental impact. Choose unbleached, natural options when possible, and look for paper labeled PCF (processed chlorine free). It’s somewhat confusing, but PCF is preferable to TCF (totally chlorine free) because TCF paper has no recycled content.
Green Printer and other companies offer Mohawk papers, which are 100% recycled, eco-certified and manufactured with wind power. It is important to remember though, that paper fibers eventually breakdown so they can be recycled only a limited number of times. Other options include sustainably sourced paper made from bamboo and other fast-growing, renewable fibers.
For more printing options, check out the list of printing companies certified by the Sustainable Green Printing Partnership As of October 2009, the company had listed only eight printers, but that is seven more than you need for a printing job.
The Environmental Protection Agency also lists several printing companies powered by renewable energy, but does not factor in other sustainable practices.
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[Paper Tiger, which became a site sponsor after this article was assigned, offers a 15% discount to our readers. – Ed.]
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