Sustainable Printing

Yesterday’s post on VOCs and Offset Printing discussed the causes and possible solutions to the amount of VOCs emitted into the atmosphere during the printing process.  I limited that post to be relevant only to traditional offset lithographic printing, but what about digital printing?  Is it a better or worse offender in VOC emissions?

The three areas of VOC emissions I touched on yesterday included the inks, cleaning agents and fountain solutions needed in the production process.  I will discuss the digital equivalent to these areas so you can have a simple side-by-side comparison.  Please note however that I am only going to touch on the dry-toner ink system used in most digital printing.  There are some ink-jet and liquid toner technologies in play with some digital printers, but dry-toner is the main method of printing so I will stick to that today.

• Inks - Because many of the high-production digital printers use a dry-toner system, digital printing bypasses several of the high-VOC components of printing.  While the inks in offset printing emit VOCs through the drying and then evaporating of the solvent components in the ink, dry toner is, well already dry.  The powder is heat-infused on top of the paper versus being liquefied and soaking into the paper.  There are no VOCs emitted from the toner since nothing evaporates into the air.

• Cleaning Agents – The need for cleaning agents is altogether eliminated with dry-toner printers.  With digital printing, there are no excess inks to clean from the machine for the next print job.  By eliminating the need for cleaning agents, all the VOCs found in those products are eliminated as well.

• Fountain Solution – Well, again, with a dry-toner system, the need for a fountain solution is eliminated.  Since IPA (isopropyl alcohol) is the main culprit of VOC emissions in the fountain solutions, by not having a need for the solution, the need for IPA also is removed.

So are there any sources of VOCs with digital printing?  Any electronics device that is made from plastics emits low amounts of VOCs over time.  Since the printers and presses are encased in plastics, there are VOCs there.  Toner dust contains a small amount of VOCs as well, but since there are not many opportunities for that dust to escape into the air, the emission of VOCs is minimal if not non-existent.  Overall, there are far less VOC emissions in digital printing than with offset printing.  If digital printing would be a suitable fit for your next project, I encourage you to take a look into this option.

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