Colours light up the world. Synthetic chemical based colours do not. On the contrary they darken the world as pollutants which is why eco-lovers have come up with sustainable eco-friendly ink which is made with/from a vegetable source.
Now to fully appreciate the wonders of vegetable ink, perhaps it’s better if we first understood what conventional colours are made of and the effects their usage has on us.
Conventional coloured ink is made with a base of petroleum. And since it’s no big surprise that petroleum-based products have serious health and environmental implications, you can only expect that petroleum/oil based ink is no exception to the rule. Conventional petroleum-based inks emit high levels of volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
VOCs are greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming and act as indoor air pollutants that carry serious health threats. Now due to the fact that the petroleum based inks and toners experience incomplete combustion of the oil, they are effectively the second largest users of carbon black.
Furthermore, certain pigments which give ink its colour are formulated with harmful metals (metallic pigment) and though they may give rise to beautiful colours, they will also result in environmental and worker health hazards, especially in the metals extraction, processing and disposal stages. Adding to that problem, such ink colours might also entail additional hazardous steps during the press cleaning process. To top the quandary, metal contents (such as barium, copper, and zinc) in ink do not easily decompose and have the tendency to contaminate groundwater leading to even more environmental issues.
Now the eco-friendlier version of ink would be agri-based ink which is derived from vegetable oil. Agri-based inks are predominately made from non-toxic soybean oil instead of petrochemicals although they can also be made many other kinds of vegetable oils including walnut oil, linseed oil, olive oil, corn oil, canola oil and rapeseed oil.
It doesn’t really matter which vegetable oil base you are choose because using soy and other vegetable oils will reduce VOC emissions and create a safer work environment for print shop employees. Normally soy ink will contain other vegetable oil to aid in the drying process.
However, vegetable ink is not perfect. While it certainly is more eco-friendly then the conventional petro-chemical based inks, the manufacture of soy and vegetable-based inks does involve the extensive use of diesel fuel, petroleum-based pesticides and herbicides unless the vegetable source is purely organic.
By using vegetable based inks, printing presses can be cleaned with a water-based cleaner instead of the high VOC solvent cleaners required with petroleum-based ink. Furthermore, vegetable based ink is easier to deink in the recycling process and produces a less toxic sludge, benefiting the environment.
Now while it’s clear that we haven’t yet found the solution to a purely harmless to environment, it does not mean that we cannot in the meantime dedicate ourselves to helping the environment by using sustainable ink (Agri-based ink)
In summary, sustainable ink should do the following:
- Reduce VOC emissions
- Generate less toxic waste
- Be manufactured from renewable resources
- Be easily de-inkable/reusable
- Result in de-inking sludges, which are less hazardous
- Biodegradable in nature
- Not formulated to include: harmful additives or finishing
