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Printing
Printing can potentially affect
the environment and worker health due to the use of
materials that contain volatile organic compounds (VOCs)
such as inks, press wash and solvents. These materials
result in air emissions and hazardous waste. Waste is
also the result of scrap and using excess raw materials.
Solvents
Solvent emissions should be reduced for many reasons.
- Solvent use can be costly.
Traditional solvents-like trichloroethylene and methylene
chloride-are expensive to use due to regulations,
while newer ones are expensive to purchase.
- Toxic exposure to workers.
- Large uses of traditional solvents,
over 10,000 pounds a year, require reporting under
the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA)/Toxic
Release Inventory (TRI) regulations and pollution
prevention planning under the Minnesota Toxic Pollution
Prevention Act (TPPA).
Anagram
Saves Over $68,600 a Year A MnTAP intern helped
Anagram International in Eden Prairie, adopt a multiple
stage cleaning system and other cost saving process
improvements.
Biobased
Cleaning Solvents Bolger Printing switched to bio-based
solvents for press cleanup.
Multiple
Stage Cleaning Reduces New Solvent Purchases & Saves
Money Let your dirty solvent do your dirty work.
That's the principle behind multiple-stage cleaning.
With multiple-stage cleaning, dirty solvent removes
most of the soil, while the clean solvent of the additional
stages thoroughly cleans the parts and brings them to
specification.
Solvent
Recycling The fact sheet Selecting a Still for On-site
Solvent Recycling Become better prepared to select the
right still for your on-site solvent recycling.
VOCs
The case study Reducing VOC's in Flexography highlights
the experience of one wide-web flexographic printer
that successfully reduced volatile organic compound
(VOC) emissions and hazardous waste by switching inks.
Scrap
Hood Flexible
Packaging Saves $50,000 by Reducing Film Scrap Reducing
waste from flexographic printing at a polyethylene bag
manufacturer.
Quality
Control in Label Converting American Fuji Seal tackles
AriZona ginseng tea labeling, capturing the subtlety
of Oriental graphics in perfect register and with a
rejection rate of .043 percent.
Other Raw Materials
Maybe Your Chemistry
Can Come in Small Packages The benefits of using
freeze-dried packets of photoprocessing chemicals.
Links
Printers'
National Environmental Assistance Center PNEAC is
a Web site that provides information on environmental
issues related to the printing, publishing and packaging
industry. It includes resources on including inks, plates,
solvents, air emissions calculations and permitting,
plus information on training and conferences.
Great Printer Environmental Initiative
Printing Industry of Minnesota (PIM) has a voluntary
program aimed at increasing environmental, health and
safety compliance and pollution prevention within the
printing industry. It also has an environmental, health
and safety auditing program.
RadTech has an internet based Printer's Guide for UV and EB Technology. The guide contains articles on inks, rollers, blankets, curing equipment, radiometry, press set up, best practices, and more.
If you have environmental questions
related to printing, contact Paul
Gutkowski, PIM, at 612/379-6008.
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