Now more than ever, having a sense of environmental awareness is important. As climate change continues to affect people more and more, people need to prepare to make good, eco friendly decisions. This includes eco friendly printing for all of your necessary print jobs too.
Are you not sure what eco friendly printing is? Or you don’t know where to start to make the switch to green printing? Don’t worry: here are some of the benefits that eco printing has on the environment.
Proof Your Document Electronically
Instead of printing out a proof of your document, you can instead review a digital proof. Thanks to programs like Adobe, you can proof what your document will look like on your screen rather than printing out whole copies of it before your printing job.
Save yourself the paper by opting for proofing your document electronically. If you can avoid printing altogether, you can begin using PDFs more than printing documents out too.
Use PDFs or Electronic Documents When Possible
Whenever possible, you can avoid the printing process altogether by using PDFs or other forms of electronic documents for your work.
Now, as more people work from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of PDFs and other electronic documents for work is more widespread because people are not often working in offices anymore. Also, electronic documents are a great way to reduce the chance of COVID-19 exposure and infection too.
If you do need to print a document, consider using eco friendly paper to get the job done as well. You can also use Print and Marketing Services.
Use Eco Friendly Paper for Printing
If you do need to print something out, consider using eco friendly paper only. “What does eco friendly paper look like?” you ask. “Isn’t it recycled paper?”
Those are great questions! Right now, recycled printing paper is more affordable than ever and available more than ever. It is not difficult to make the switch to eco friendly paper like it was twenty years ago. In fact, for every ton of recycled paper, seventeen trees and more are saved!
Producing paper for printing leaves behind a huge carbon footprint. If you use recycled paper or paper made by renewable energy sources, you are not contributing to that carbon footprint increase then. There is even eco friendly paper made without trees and from bamboo or straw waste instead.
Use Chemical-Free Ink
The next step for your green printing life is to use chemical-free ink. Chemical ink releases toxins into the environment, so your eco friendly printing should include an ink alternative too.
Instead of chemical ink, try inks made from soy or vegetables! It may sound like it would not print very well, but it will reduce the number of toxic solvents released into the environment as chemical ink has.
It is these solvents that do the most damage environmentally, not the actual ink itself. Even when using an ink made of petroleum, you are releasing VOCs, or volatile organic compounds, into the environment.
This is why using a chemical-free ink is an important step in your green printing process. Using vegetable-based ink is better for the environment in the end. Also, when you recycle paper later, it is much easier to recycle paper using vegetable-based ink than ink with chemicals.
Green Printing Processes
Another step in your environmental awareness when it comes to printing needs to be considering other printing processes for your documents and projects. Choose the best eco friendly “green” printing options!
Several green printing processes reduce your carbon footprint from printing. Here’s what you can consider:
Digital Printing
Compared to traditional printing, digital printing uses significantly less paper. It also has a different process for its ink too.
The ink, rather than being absorbed into the paper like with traditional printing, instead layers separately onto the paper itself. People often find that prints made via digital printing do not fade.
Use an alternative ink, even one water-based, and you are good to go when it comes to green printing!
Printing without Water
Often called water-less printing, this printing process gets rid of lithographic printing. Basically, it takes the water and dampening part out of the printing process to be more eco friendly.
Waterless printing has an alternative way of printing color onto a piece of paper. Because of this, it is a great way to ensure environmental awareness during your printing process.
Offset Printing
Offset printing is all about using colors made from oil. As everyone knows. oil and water do not mix, so the oil-based color will not have any water in it. Many often say that offset printing is the green alternative to chemical printing.
During the printing process, any text or images you are printing are engraved to a plate made of aluminum and then rolled over. After that, the ink on the plate is brought to a rubber sheet and then to the paper itself.
You can count on offset printing to last a long time too.
Environmental Awareness in Printing
When it comes to printing, you want to choose eco friendly printing options. Building on your environmental awareness will help you make eco friendly decisions about what to do with printing for your workplace.
Proof your documents electronically. When possible, you can go all or mostly digital by working with electronic documents like PDFs instead. If you need to print something, you can consider on-demand printing too.
Choose eco friendly paper and chemical-free ink for your printing processes. Instead of harmful conventional printing, you can invest in digital printing, waterless printing, or offset printing practices too. The carbon footprint with conventional printing is big, but you don’t need to contribute to that anymore!
Want to know more about other important steps to make your business more eco friendly? Check out the rest of our website for other posts! Build on your environmental awareness before it is too late.
