INX International, provider of inks for commercial printing, packaging, and digital printing, has put together a primer for understanding the environmental effects of printing inks, from ink's carbon footprint and recycling to the recycling of printed corrugated. Today, in Part One of this three part series, we take a look at the formulation of inks, de-inking of printed products, disposal and recycling, as well as a look at ink's carbon footprint. Do printing inks use renewable resources? Offset printing inks use several renewable resources. Soy oil, linseed oil, tung oil, and chinawood are all renewable plant-derived materials. Rosin resins used in the ink vehicle are derived from pine trees and other species of conifers. It should be noted that not all resins used in inks are derived from renewable resources. Hydrocarbon resins are derived from petroleum. The amount of renewable versus hydrocarbon resins in an ink will vary depending on the specific ink properties and formulation goals. The pigments in inks are made from petroleum-based resources due to end customer requirements for light fastness. How do printing inks fit into a sustainability program? There are many different types of printing inks (i.e. sheetfed, web, liquid, energy-curable, metal decorating, and coatings). The decision to choose an ink, and its specific performance characteristics, typically is made based on the printer's need to balance performance, cost and environmental compliance. Often the choice comes down to performance. To meet the performance requirements a printer may have a very limited choice of ink systems. So choosing an ink often comes down to the selection of an ink that meets the performance requirements on the press and its product-end-use needs as an ink printed finished good. All printing inks are made up of four classes of raw materials; pigments, resins, solvents, and additives. The pigment is the color portion of the formula. Pigments are solid particles. The resins are also solid, and resins bind tbe pigments to the substrate and provide many of the end-use properties that are required as an ink printed-finished good. The solvent reduces the ink to a liquid form, allowing the ink to be printed by the various selected printing process. Additives are a wide range of raw materials which modify the physical properties of the ink to improve its use on the printing press. Most of all of these four classes of raw materials are petroleum based products. These are highly refined and processed specialty chemical materials which deliver very unique properties to the various printing ink formulations. There are some ink raw materials which do come from renewable resource feed stocks. There has been a long tradition of use of renewable raw materials in inks. There are a wide range of current renewable raw material components that are used in various printing inks formulations which includes: vegetable oils and esters, alkyd/rosin esters, cellulose esters/nitrocellulose, fatty acid amides, epoxy soy bean oil, vegetable waxes, and bio-ethanol. But remember the use of renewable raw materials in various printing inks is influenced by technical considerations, customer requirements and pricing. Ink companies are continuing to practice environmental stewardship on a global bases, fostering technical and regulatory groups to work to produce ink, coatings, pigments, fountain solutions and other products that are environmentally friendly. Ink manufacturers today are experimenting with many types of new vehicles and other non-petroleum products to produce the next generation ink systems that will continue to offer environmentally friendly "green" inks. Is it possible to measure an ink's carbon footprint? To date there has been no joint PIA/GATF/NAPIM activity on this question. However from rough estimates the Carbon Footprint for an ink may vary between 100-200 lb CO2/kg ink (approximately 10-20%)* *EuPIA Sth Annual Conference 2008 What is the contribution of the printing ink to the overall carbon footprint of the printing process? Ink contributes 0.5% of the overall carbon footprint of the printing process where other components contributions are paper, 76% of the total carbon footprint; machine usage, 12.5%; transport, 6%; and plates 5%; in a calculation done by Manroland based on the total carbon life cycle including CO2 emissions from the production of the actual manufacture of equipment and materials. (from Ink World, July 2008 article "Energy Efficiency, Sustainability Are Key Topics at drupa 2008.") How has the ink industry contributed to the environmentally responsible disposal of the final printed products? The ink industry has reformulated all inks to exclude the known toxic metals: lead, cadmium, mercury and hexavalent chromium. Tomorrow, in Part Two of this series, we will examine biodegradability and recycling issues of ink and printed products and the following day, in Part Three, we will address recyclability of corrugated.