Environmental Concerns.

There are three areas of concern when addressing the environmental impact of offset printing inks:

• Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC’s)

• Non-Renewable Resources

• Heavy Metals

While some issues and solutions surrounding printing inks are industry wide, for the purpopse of this program, we are referring only to offset sheetfed printing inks.

The base for traditional printing inks is petroleum. The evaporation of the petroleum is what allows the ink to dry.

During this process however, VOC’s are emmitted into the atmosphere.

Another drawback of petroleum is that it is not a renewable resource.

Vegetable based inks.

Towards addressing the concerns with petroleum based inks, more and more printers are turning toward vegetable based inks.

Because of heavy marketing by the soy industry, it is a common misconception that soy is the best and or only substitute for petroleum based inks.

Both vegetable and soy inks require some amount of VOC emitting compound in order to facilitate drying. Soy inks actually require a stronger, less environmentally friendly compound than other vegetable based inks.

Besides soy, other vegetable inks may contain linseed, cottonseed, vernonia, sunflower, tung and canola oil.

RAM Printing uses vegetable-based ink that contains 20-25% of a combination of linseed, soy and chinawood oils which emmitts only 5% VOC’s and provides the quick dry time needed for the fast turnaround of printed projects.

Benefits & Drawbacks.

• The benefits of using vegetable oil based inks include:

• Reduced VOC’s (vegetable oil inks emit some VOC’s)

• The reduction in use of a non renewable resource (petroleum) with a renewable one.

• A slightly lower ink useage as vegetable inks tend to spread further.

• Easier de-inking during the recycling process

While these benefits absolutely make vegetable oil inks a more environmental choice, it should be noted that many of the same drawbacks of petroleum based inks also plague soy and vegetable based inks.

These drawbacks include:

• The same amount of solvents are needed for clean-up

• The existance of some petroleum and other ingredients means that ink waste still poses a disposal issue

• Any heavy metals or other addittives for metallic or other specialty inks are the same.