Last April, for Earth Day, I looked at the overall state of sustainability in the printing industry in general. Now, I’d like to zero in on wide-format printing in particular. For many years, the sustainability discussion in wide format has centered on ink technologies (superficially expressed as “solvent bad, latex or aqueous good, UV not horrible”) but, like elsewhere in the printing industry, other, more pressing issues have come to the fore, typically centered around overall product use and end of life concerns.

On Tuesday, in his look at the state of inkjet printing, David Zwang wrote:

It is important to remember that, while the components of water-based ink are less harmful to the environment than those of solvent-based ink, the ultimate eco-footprint of water-based ink has as much to do with how it is handled, stored, and cleaned as it does with the fact that it is much less toxic. Water-based ink is only eco-friendly when you use and dispose of it properly and completely, in a responsible manner. Even the best, most gentle industrial inks and cleaning products are still chemicals. Much of the long-term ecological damage of printing ink is a result of the alcohol in the fountain solution and solvent waste in clean-up, not the process or the chemicals.