Transcript of our conversation: On Thursday, July 16, Wal-Mart announced a new initiative working with government agencies, NGOs, and product manufacturers to develop a new standard that would result in a "sustainability index" for all the products on the retailer's shelves. The index would include both the environmental impact as well as the social impact of the production, distribution, sale, and "end of life" for the tens of thousands of products the company sells. At first glance printers and paper and ink manufacturers involved in the production of printed materials might have heaved a sigh of relief, believing they were untouched by the project. Think again! How much of a consumer product on the shelf is packaging? Personal care products, for example, are often packed in boxes and bottles that are much larger than net amount of the contents. Pharmaceuticals such as tablets, caplets, and capsules can be packaged in "single dosage" envelopes or folders. And all of that involves printing: labels, boxes, instruction sheets, and more. And as suppliers to Wal-Mart's suppliers, printers will be asked to report on the environmental and social impact of their portion of the product. Paper manufacturers are rapidly getting on board with Chain of Custody certification through organizations such as the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) and the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC). Now ink manufacturers are able to participate in a program recently launched by the National Association of Printing Ink Manufacturers (NAPIM) that certifies the amount of Bio-derived Renewable Content used in the production of printing inks. George Fuchs, Manager - Environmental Affairs & Information Systems, NAPIM, describes the origin of the Bio-derived Renewable Content certification program. (George) "The BRC program was really the result of interest and inquiries from the printers who were looking to respond to sustainability initiatives from the print buyers and print consumers, Wal-Mart and Target, and those folks. So we embarked on this program. The BRC program is the first phase of a much larger program looking at the overall impact of printing ink manufacturing." Environmental life cycle analysis for any product is a complex process and it is even more difficult when there is no consensus about a program to measure and track it. NAPIM embarked on the BRC certification program to give ink manufacturers something they could use now, rather than to wait for a complete lifecycle analysis program to be rolled out. In the 1980s, soy ink formulations were marketed first for newspaper printing then for sheet-fed offset presses. The impetus for development of soy-based inks came from the oil shortages in the 1970s that threatened the supply of petroleum-based chemicals. Move ahead nearly 40 years, and we may be facing a point of peak oil in the not too distant future. Comparing today's petroleum-based versus bio-derived products, it's not clear that bio-derived materials are more environmentally friendly, but they are renewable. And oil is not. (George) "Regardless of whether it is more environmentally friendly, it is renewable; we can keep on making this stuff." Expanding on the range of bio-derived materials used in printing inks beyond soy, NAPIM formalized a program that consistently measures, registers, and communicates the percentage of renewable content in printing inks. It is important to note that solvent-based inks don't use much bio-derived content; it is traditional offset and water-based inks that can be made with renewable materials. (George) "The first part of the program was to develop as broad a range of bio-derived materials that we were familiar with that are used in printing inks, and those are up on our website. So we developed this list of materials that could conceivably be used. Then an ink manufacturer would go through the list and say, 'I'm using this resin or this is the percent in my ink formulation.' " Manufacturers - both members and non-members of NAPIM - report the materials and their percentages in the formulation for review. Inks are assigned an index number that is based on a range of content, not an exact percentage, of bio-derived renewable content in the ink. It is a general measure of how much of the ink is derived from renewable resources. When the formulations have been evaluated and assigned an index and certification number, the ink manufacturer and their products are listed on the NAPIM website where the list is publicly available. As of July 21, seven printing ink manufacturers had been certified. Inks from those manufacturers have indexes ranging from 30 to 80, based on the amount of bio-derived renewable content. Is it possible for an ink to be produced entirely of bio-derived renewable materials, that is, to have an index of 100? According to John Daugherty, Technical Manager, NAPIM, the answer is "no." (John) "Certainly it would be possible to put something together but it wouldn't really give you the color intensity nor would it perform on press, or have the kind of cost that people could live with." In order to get to the highest index point possible, one has to consider more than just the oils and resins. (John) "The main thing that you have to consider is the pigment portion. Those are all chemical compounds and that's what's required in almost all printing inks." In theory, it is possible to take any vegetable base and add 10% pigment to reach 90%. In his opinion 80% is probably the maximum that would perform as needed. It appears we have reached a threshold determined by the key element that makes up ink - that is, the color. It is the pigment that gives ink its color, so we wait for someone to come up with new pigments. Or we find ways to use the same colorants from insects and plants that were used thousands of years ago, without sacrificing the range and intensity we demand now.