Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Sustainable Digital Printing In An Overview

By Kristen Baird


Over the past years, the practices on printing have seen changes from the fashion buzzwords to becoming life facts. Majority of the customers today prefer sustainable digital printing options which range from the biodegradable ones to the recyclable stocks. Recent surveys indicated that various consumers did prefer purchasing environmentally friendly products and services.

On a fair ground, the print industry is also characterized by various drawbacks. An estimated 45 trillion and more pages are printed annually. From this mega prints, only a third of the total is consumed owing to their higher rating of becoming obsolete thus making them irrelevant. Printing exciting and emotional, stunning and smart and on top of it all making the materials to matter is way that can be used to solve the situation so as to protect the environment.

Being sustainable simply means that one works in a manner that will yield the successes of today while also eliminating problems that may arise in the future. Sustainable printing puts into consideration the aspects of the process of design and printing rather than typically opting for the soy inks and recycled papers. It may involve how your project is designed, location of vendors and resources, energy consumed and the daily running of business activities.

While making your print materials designs and plans, you can adopt the following tips to make your activities more useful. Ensure that your materials of choice are renewable, recyclable and biodegradable. Thought this sounds very obvious, it is still vital to ensure you keep sight of role played by your project materials. Inks based on vegetables normally are free of heavy metals, are produced in safe and sound environments and have minimal post-consumer waste.

Issue on size and weight. Make sure that amount of papers and other materials used are reduced by designing smaller pieces. Saving significant amounts of inputs without having to compromise on integrity of output is very much possible. Products that are light in nature have also been observed to cut down carbon emissions and also making costs of shipping to be more efficient.

Re-packaging the packaging. Considering on options of packaging that may be made in other purposes or get reused in ways that are both interesting and functional is the ideal way to go. An example of this may be in the case where a baby stroller company may include directions that are printed in each box that give instructions to customers on ways to turn cardboard packaging into other products like chairs or bulb holders.

Making it modular. This is a process of making custom solutions with materials that are prefabricated or standardized. These modular designs boast of not only being easier to recycle but they also get easier in updating and repairing making them have longer shelf life. Manufacturing and shipping them is also more efficient thus reducing their consumption of energy throughout their life cycle.

Taking note on the type. As you print, it is prudent to not only consider the ink but also the choice on font. There are fonts which are much easier to read and stylish in addition to them being much more efficient on ink compared to other available fonts.




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