The future of printing industry focuses on green environmental protection

In the face of increasingly serious environmental pollution, green printing has become a major development direction in China's printing industry. Among them, the first thing to do is to realize the environmental protection of ink.

Ink is an important material for printing packaging materials. It expresses patterns and characters on the substrate by printing. The ink includes main components and auxiliary components. They are uniformly mixed and repeatedly rolled to form a viscous gel-like fluid. All traditional inks are composed of colorants, film-forming substances, solvents, and auxiliaries. Among them, the coloring agent is the main component of the printing color, the amount of which accounts for about 12% to 20% of the total ink composition; the film forming material determines the fixation of the ink on the substrate, and generally consists of several resins with different properties. Together, the proportion of ink in the ink is about 20% to 25%; the other parts of the ink are solvents and additives.

At present, the traditional solvent-based ink is widely used in the printing industry. The solvent-based ink consists of pigments, binders, solvents, fillers, and adjuvants. The solvents used are mainly aromatic hydrocarbons, esters, ketones, ethers, etc. Organic solvents, most of these solvents are toxic, can contaminate foods, medicines, cosmetics and other items that are packaged; they are volatile, have a strong irritating odor, and can pollute the environment and affect the health of workers; organic solvents are flammable and easy to use. Explosion, there is a hidden danger of production safety.

If we want to stand on foot, we must take a sustainable development path, establish a sense of crisis in resources and the environment, and promote the “green consumption” of new environmental protection printing processes, new technologies, and new materials in order to achieve transcendence over traditional printing production methods. Therefore, in recent years, many printing plants have consistently adhered to the use of new printing inks, materials and accessories that are free of pollution or less polluting, have good safety performance, and do not pose a hazard to the environment and the human body. This will inevitably raise certain costs. We believe that as long as printing houses can conscientiously consider the environment and the health of workers, then green printing will not last long. Enterprises can also be invincible in the competition.

Under such development trend, the implementation of the policy to eliminate backward production capacity in the ink industry is increasing, and the elimination of backward ink production capacity in economically developed regions has been gradually launched. Following the large-scale closure of a small ink factory with a capacity of 300 tons or less in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, Shunde District, Foshan City, Guangdong Province also launched a heavy blow. It will comprehensively investigate the basic situation of ink production enterprises and eliminate and shut down ink companies with an annual output of less than 300 tons. Zhejiang also focuses on this work.

The environmental protection of ink has become a key factor in whether the printing industry can achieve green. The green concept of environmental protection is becoming the consensus of the ink industry. The industry will develop in the direction of non-toxic and non-polluting products. The market prospects for water-based inks and environment-friendly offset printing inks are promising.