Responsible Choice: How to Find an Eco-Friendly Printing House

Caring for the environment is a current modern trend. Many of us try to replace plastic bags with paper or fabric ones, sort garbage, and safely dispose of hazardous waste like thermometers or batteries. When choosing suppliers or contractors, we also pay attention to the environmental friendliness of a particular company.

This factor is especially important when choosing a printing house, since printing production is traditionally considered not very environmentally friendly and at the same time the concentration of such enterprises in cities is quite high. However, modern technologies make it possible to reduce the harmful impact on nature to a minimum. What should you pay attention to?

Eco-friendly paints

The degree of impact of printing production on the environment depends on a number of components. First of all, when placing an order with a printing house, it is worth clarifying exactly what paints will be used. Traditional printing inks are often toxic, and this is noticeable not only during printing, but also on the finished product (in terms of odor). There are modern alternatives that are water-based or plant-based, as well as so-called UV-curable inks (those that are cured under a special UV dryer). Eco-friendly series are present in almost every major manufacturer, so this requirement of yours should not become a problem.

“Correct” paper

The raw materials for making paper are most often trees, so taking care of the environment environment, its use should be kept to a minimum: at least do not print out those documents that can be used electronically, and send unnecessary copies for recycling.

It is also a good option to use paper made from recycled materials, although it In appearance, it is not suitable for every type of printed product.

The so-called kraft paper is also considered environmentally friendly. There is no long-term bleaching involved in its production, so the environmental impact is less than that of traditional paper. This material is most often used for packaging, but recently it is increasingly used for commercial products, for example, the production of business cards. A little creativity - and the brownish paper turns into a rather stylish product, reminding everyone that the owner of this enterprise cares about the environment.

If using brown paper is unacceptable, pay attention to environmentally friendly paper. Special certificates confirm the use of this particular paper. One of the most common is the certificate of the international organization FSC (Forest Stewardship Council). Among the members of this organization are many world-famous “green” institutions, including the World Wildlife Fund WWF and Greenpeace.

The presence of an FSC certificate means that all stages of paper production complied with international environmental standards, and the raw materials were wood harvested from legally managed forests.

Eco-friendly production

The printing house, which follows modern trends, constantly introduces “green” technologies into all stages of the production process. One example is the use of so-called process-free or chemical-free technology in the manufacture of printing plates (special plates through which the image in the printing machine is transferred to paper). Previously, their processing required a large amount of chemicals.

Small amount of waste

It is estimated that about 30% of the circulation may go to waste associated with setting up printing equipment. However, modern automation and workflow management tools make it possible to eliminate the human factor and reduce waste to a minimum. It’s very easy to check how everything is happening specifically in your chosen printing house: you can ask for a tour of the production.

Also, in order to avoid a large amount of waste, you should be careful about the layout of your product. If there are fields left and a lot of space is “idle”, you can place several orders on one sheet at the same time (for example - booklets, flyers and business cards). You can also ask the printing house to combine your order with someone else’s. This will also allow you to save significantly.

Digital “printing on demand” would also be an excellent option - if there is no need to produce a large print run. This way you will get exactly the number of prints that you need.

So, we cannot completely stop using printed products. But we can take a responsible approach to ordering it, and choose a printing house that will produce it with the least harm to the environment.