Sustainable Printing

We are often asked whether or not our practice as letterpress printers is sustainable. The photo accompanying this blog post says it all - it's not our typical photo is it? It's a tulip. Note how there's no presses around it, no Mothers' Day cards hanging off of it, and no promise to create a limited edition print of it. Sometimes it seems that the most ecologically friendly printing is no printing at all. Like every other business we consume resources, materials, and produce waste. There is no way around it, except one: use less, waste less.
   Some printers advertise that they use Soy Based inks. It's a little known fact that almost all inks formulated for sheet fed presses (letterpress and offset) are soy based. If soy oil isn't used, then linseed oil is. Both soy and linseed are a product of American agriculture, both are renewable and efficiently farmed commodities, and both produce an oil that is VOC free, or close to it. Every sheet fed operation in the country uses soy based ink, or its ecological equal linseed based ink. But let this be understood soberly: is the harvesting and processing of the commercial crops that end up in our inks carbon neutral or sustainable? Is it truly an advantage to use a soy based ink? The more important question is how much soy based ink does a printer use? And what is it washed up with, and how is the waste from the wash-up being disposed of?
   Some printers advertise that they only ever print on recycled stock. Try to find a paper these days that doesn't contain some post-consumer content. Or better yet, try to find out what paper mill is still cutting down virgin forests, bleaching it's fibers, and then pouring the byproducts into rivers and wetlands. Consider that 100% cotton papers are only as affordable as they are because they don't use cotton from the farm, but the by product of knitting mills and recycling worldwide. The truth is that the production of paper is very efficient by necessity, and very clean by regulation. Your choice of paper these days is not between one that is bad for the environment and one that is good, but between one that is good and one that is better. There are other aspects of this to consider that are more relevant, like how much carbon was produced in getting the paper to press, and how much produced to print on it?
   We take these questions very seriously at EM Letterpress. We know that like other letterpress printers our presses use less energy to run than the bigger machines of conventional printing, but to be fair, we also know that we fire up our presses more often as we tend to do smaller jobs. We also know that compared with the conventional processes we use less sheets to set up with, and produce less waste in running. We use less ink, and yes of course, our inks are all vegetable oil based - mostly soy oil. We wash up with water soluble biodegradable non-hazardous VOC free solvents. We also use naptha based press wash, but very little - at most 10 gallons in a busy year. We collect our waste in a 50 gallon drum (to be disposed of properly when full), and as a testament to how little waste we produce, the drum has been in our shop for nearly 5 years, and it's not two-thirds full yet. We almost always print on cotton, or part post-consumer content papers, and all of our off-cuts are recycled. We buy our more popular papers in bulk to reduce both cost and delivery fuel. We ship with common carriers like UPS who've made efficient use of fuel and labor their business.
   It's not possible to print without some impact on the environment, but it is possible to limit that impact. The old adage "Waste not, want not" is our creed for sustainability, and we invite you all to work with us with that in mind. Specify two colors instead of three, run 500 cards instead of 250 now and 250 later, print shells (for one color imprinting in the future), use an ink that we have left-over (even if it's a shade off from your target), use paper that's already on our shelves. It's not always appropriate or reasonable to economize like that, but it's another way to think about sustainability. When an order needs to be perfect in every way, and using scraps and leftovers is out of the question, you can rest assured that when you print with us we make the effort to guard against waste, and we strive for sustainability in every way we can, and we're ready to have the conversation with you on what the best way to proceed is. We cannot be Green or Sustainable without you.

Further reading, and some of the sources that inspired this post:
Soybean Oil-Based Inks Gain in Popularity
WHAT'S THAT STUFF? - Ink
http://www.napim.org/PublicArea/Printers/EnvImp.pdf
http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/20938/1/spgome01.pdf
Clark University | ActiveLearning | The Arts
A Nonprofit's Guide to Green Printing