Sustainable Print

Sustainable print solutions—whether those are business cards, stickers to hand out at events, product packaging, brochures, or your e-commerce shipping packaging—can have a big impact on your business’s efforts to reduce chemicals throughout the planet! Research shows that branded materials can elevate a customer’s perceived value of what they bought by as much as 30% compared to non-branded packaging and collateral. With any project, there are opportunities to approach them with intentionality, and if you’ve landed on Fairwind’s website, keeping the planet in mind must be a part of your values. When considering the sustainability features of a physical product, there are typically three areas to consider: 1) source inputs, 2) the product’s life, and 3) end of life. Let’s break them down:

1. Source inputs are what a product is made of. In the print world, this could be paper, plastic, fabric, etc. When looking at this from a sustainability lens, recycled inputs are an ideal source as they pull from an existing waste stream instead of the natural environment. This is a crucial element of working toward a circular economy—a truly sustainable way of living where we are not depleting natural resources more quickly than they can replenish themselves. The good news is that recycled options are on the rise! A big contributor to this recent surge is consumer demand. As society becomes more educated and intentional with their buying power, the market will respond accordingly.
2. The life of the product has to do with durability, functionality, and quality. For example, let’s say you’re looking for a sticker to use as a product label on your shampoo bottles. when considering your material options for that sticker, you want to ensure it holds up in its environment. While a recycled paper sticker is the most appealing from a low-footprint perspective, it may get worn rather quickly if in a wet environment. Opting for a laminated or recycled plastic sticker may extend the life of the product and contribute to its longevity despite the additional inputs. Fortunately, Fairwind works with unique professionals in the industry who offer 100% recyclable sticker/label liners (the sheet of paper the stickers come on).
3. The end-of-life is how you would responsibly dispose of a product. To bring back the circular economy perspective, choosing a product that allows for easy recycling at the end of its life is ideal so that it can live on in the recycling stream and become something new again. While composting is an appealing option for naturally biodegradable products like paper, it is ending the life of those paper fibers and not offering much in the way of nutrients back to the soil. Additives like glues or inks can sometimes affect the compostability status of a printed material as well, as they are not completely free of toxins.

This all factors in to sustainable print, and we’ll talk about that shortly.

Check Your Plastic

When considering packaging for an e-commerce business, paper products can easily check the boxes of recycled inputs and end-of-life nicely as most households have access to curbside recycling. A popular alternative these days is the poly (polyethylene or polypropylene) bag—a thin, flexible plastic that often ships soft goods. Although this can check the boxes of recycled inputs and a durable life, the poly bag’s end-of-life is often a bit trickier. These single-use bags are produced from crude oil, and each plastic bag contributes approximately 1.58kg CO2e, equal to 8km of driving. (Yikes!) Most thin film plastics need to be taken to special collection locations as they are not accepted with curbside recycling. It’s not that the material is any less recyclable; the issue is that it gets caught in the sorting equipment of recycling facilities, causing machine jams and slowing down processing time. The consideration here is the extra step the end user with the poly bag needs to take to responsibly dispose of it, resulting in a lot of these bags going to the landfill where it may take centuries to break down.

Many new bioplastic options are emerging on the market as well. While the marketing around these dissolvable or compostable plastics is convincing, these materials are often made from monocrops, like corn, which are depleting our soils nutrients. The suggested end-of-life for these products is composting, but what is often not understood is that they only truly break down in industrial composting environments which only ≈4% of the population has access to, whereas curbside recycling is much more established, making materials that are readily recyclable the preferred choice.

Ultimately, whichever option you choose, you can take steps to lessen your impact with the material you choose and educate your end user about the most responsible way to dispose of it to help keep things out of the landfill.

Sustainable Print For E-Commerce Solutions

Now that we’ve reviewed some common materials for printing, let’s dive into the world of sustainable print. A major consideration is the ink used. Most pigments are carbon-derived and many ink mixtures on the market have chemical additives (VOCs) that are harmful to us and the environment. There are some options on the market that are less harmful, like hydro-soy inks and pigments, where water is the carrier and soy is the bonder holding the pigment. There will still be some additives to allow the ink to adhere to the material and dry relatively quickly, but they typically make up ≈2% of the total mixture.

There is one ink, however, that stands above the rest: Algae Ink, created by Living Ink Technologies. The pigment is derived from algae instead of carbon, creating a rich black pigment. Not only is this ink natural in makeup, but the algae is harvested from a waste stream, making it a carbon-neutral input source. While there are some additives, similar to the hydro-soy blends, you are left with a naturally biodegradable pigment that is toxin-free.

It’s important to note that not all inks work with every print method. For example, algae ink is currently only functional in a flexographic or screen-printing environment. Due to the nature of the ink, the viscosity and PH need to be adjusted and dialed in before setting up a print job as the chemistry changes as it sits dormant. This is one main reason it is not yet available in a digital print environment. While toner (the main pigment in digital print processes) is not ideal, if it is used sparingly on a printed material, like a notecard, it would not affect the recyclability.

Fairwind does partner with a U.S. based supplier of eco-friendly packaging and print services—EcoEnclose— who can offer this ink on a variety of sustainable materials. Let us know if this is something you’d like to explore!

Thanks for reading our article! If you have any questions, or if you would like to start a project for some sustainable print design products, just give us a shout!