How To Achieve Brochure Printing That Is Eco Friendly

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By Shirley Jones


There is an urgent need to start reducing the emission of greenhouse gases into the environment and to protect our natural resources. Many customers have recognized the role they have to play; shunning businesses associated with products or services harmful to the environment and promoting those that are environment conscious. This is also being seen in the printing industry. There are several things you can do to adopt brochure printing that is eco friendly.

You need to properly utilize your raw materials and other resources which go into the creation of the brochure. These include, for example, the paper, ink, electricity and so on. One way of saving on paper is to ensure only the essential information is contained in it. A design in which the paper is folded up several times helps save on paper even more.

Conventional printing involves the use of petroleum based inks. These inks degrade the environment by releasing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into the atmosphere during the drying process. Vegetable inks have been accepted as a substitute for the petroleum based inks. Just like the commercial types, they have monochrome and color printing options. More importantly, they are environment friendly as they do not contain any VOCs.

Another area where one can conserve the environment and cut down on their operating costs at the same time is in the type of paper used in printing. Using paper obtained from pre-consumer and post-consumer waste reduces the demand for virgin paper (which would mean cutting down more trees). Post-consumer waste paper is paper that has been obtained from discarded products. Pre-consumer paper, on the other hand, is left over paper from the manufacturing process.

Apart from reducing the strain on trees, recycling paper helps in conservation in several other ways. For instance, this type of paper usually requires less water to process than virgin paper. There is less effluent emanating from this process than when processing virgin paper. For many years, there were concerns with use of chlorine as a bleaching agent but newer alternative methods which do not involve chlorine have been devised.

The other raw materials can be recycled as well. Water for example, can be recycled and reused to a great degree. If the system is functioning optimally, it can reuse more than 60% of water used in the first cycle. Ink is the other major raw material which can be reused.

Energy efficiency is good for the environment and the business. Work to reduce your reliance on fossil fuel as your source of energy and consider using more of renewable sources such as wind and solar. Get rid of inefficient equipment if possible and replace it with that which can give you higher output per unit of energy consumed. You will need to do regular servicing to the equipment to ensure that they remain efficient throughout.

Once you make the decision to go green, be prepared to meet the associated expense. While this may discourage you in the beginning, the long-term benefits are huge. Consider outsourcing part of the process if you are not in a position to finance the shift. In case of such a partnership, make sure your partner company is also environmental conscious.




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