Print is the UK's sixth largest manufacturing industry with great potential for harming the environment.
It consumes vast amounts of raw materials and uses many polluting chemicals and yet it has the least enthusiastic adoption of environmental policies of any major industry.
The industry's main negative environmental impacts arise from –
Solvent and chemical use
Extensive use is made of chemicals throughout the printing process. They are used in many essential processes such as film and plate processing, press and plate cleaning, and are a component in inks, fount solutions, glues and laminations.
Annually, a six-colour lithographic printing press, on a 24 hour shift, typically uses 4,500 litres of cleaning solvent and 7,200 litres of industrial alcohol. Thousands of litres of film and plate chemicals and tonnes of volatile printing inks are also added to this toxic mix of potential pollutants.
Isopropyl alcohol, a major pollutant, is heavily used in fount solutions, which are the industry's chief source of damaging volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions. VOCs cause ozone pollution. With the average printing company releasing up to 14 tonnes of VOCs a year, it is not surprising that printworks continue to make a significant contribution to UK industry's overall VOC emissions.
Heavy energy consumption
The huge rise in world energy consumption, the majority met by the use of fossil fuels such as coal and oil, is recognised as one of the biggest sources of carbon dioxide CO2 emissions leading to the threat of global warming.
The printing industry is a huge consumer of electrical power, with the average sized printing press using 140 kw of electricity every hour it is operating.
PAPER - some of it still from unsustainable sources – is probably the industry's chief source of waste especially during the 'make ready' stage of printing when presses are adjusted to achieve maximum quality.
While the amount of paper we recycle as a nation is increasing, we still dump around five million tonnes of it in landfill sites or incinerators every year. Even more of this could be recycled were it not for the extensive use of environmentally inappropriate adhesives, laminates and varnishes in the printing industry, which makes the paper unsuitable for reprocessing.
It has been estimated that world demand for WATER is doubling every 20 years. Population growth projections indicate that we could use more than 70 per cent of accessible freshwater by 2025. Not surprisingly, therefore, water is being increasingly viewed as a precious resource as much in need of conservation as any other human staple.
Conventional litho printing (still the most common print production process) is heavily dependent on water to dampen the printing plate during the printing process. Around 600 litres are consumed during an average print run - much of it ending up as a complex chemical cocktail which has to be disposed of as hazardous waste. Water consumption is also increased, of course, by staff-related use in commercial premises such as drinking, toilet flushing and washing.
