ERI Home IRR Home Last updated 8/11/04
The printing sector has long been the beneficiary, or at least the target, of environmental assistance programs. It seems to be a natural fit. The sector is dominated by small, in many cases tiny, businesses, widely dispersed throughout communities. (There are also a few very large shops, as well as a large number of "in-plant" operations embedded in companies whose main focus is something else.) But their aggregate impact is considerable. At the two digit SIC level, the sector just misses being in the top ten industries as emitters of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), ranking 11th, just after the rubber industry. Print shops also discharge various solvent residues and other materials in wastewater, and account for their share of solid wastes.
In addition to being prime candidates for pollution prevention initiatives, printers are in a position to help influence decisions on matters that can have environmental consequences outside their own operations. They can help promote the use of paper with high recycled and post-consumer content, and the use of environmentally friendly inks, even if the ultimate decision rests with the customer.
Several other sectors resemble the printing sector in having large numbers of broadly distributed small providers, as well as in being foci of environmental assistance efforts. Examples include auto repair, construction, health care, and metal finishing. The analogy with the metal finishing sector seems particularly apt -- both sectors are divided into a job shop and a captive shop subsector, for example, and both produce their environmental impacts when they take formulations purchased from bulk suppliers, apply the solid part to the product, and release the rest as a waste.
But the differences between the printing sector and the others are as instructive as the similarities. Once a printer has made the decision to install a particular piece of equipment to carry out a particular type of printing operation, his or her options are somewhat limited. Modern printing equipment and ink formulations embody a high degree of technical sophistication, and do not allow the user a great deal of latitude in altering the fundamental process to mitigate environmental impacts, even when the user is motivated to do so. A metal finisher can change the way he racks his parts, or experiment with alternative rinse tank configurations, but a printer is not likely to make extensive modifications to the equipment as purchased. Environmental improvement is possible if, for example, lower VOC inks are available for a given process. But while the decision to use them (when they exist) may be up to the printer, the decision to develop them rests with the ink supplier. The demands made on the properties of the ink (viscosity, surface tension, etc.) that necessitate the use of VOCs is ultimately in the hands of the equipment supplier. The printer can make the greenest choice within certain limits, but somebody else sets the limits.
Pressure on printers to lower their environmental impact is to some extent like pressure on motorists to improve their mileage and reduce their tailpipe emissions. They can take some steps (well-maintained engines and catalytic converters, fuel choices, driving habits), but the constraints on their ability to improve are largely set with the decision to purchase a particular vehicle model. Pressure on the automobile manufacturer will have far more leverage. Similarly, real environmental improvement in the printing sector will come from developments in processes, equipment, and ink formulation -- or from the gradual displacement of ink-on-paper by other imaging technologies.
Environmental impacts and risks
Effects of existing and future regulations on impacts
The major categories of printing processes are distinguished by whether the ink sits below, on, or above, or passes through, the surface that holds the ink. Very recently, several "no surface" methods have been developed. These different geometries impose different requirements on the inks, which in turn largely determines the environmental impact of each process.
[*** types of ink -- oil-based, water-based, UV curable, etc.]
Most print shops specialize in one or another of these processes.
In addition to these general trade organizations, there are independent organizations serving each printing process type:
Air emissions data for certain key criteria pollutants (ozone precursors) are available from the National Emission Trends (NET) database (1999), and hazardous air pollutant emissions data are available from the National Toxics Inventory (NTI) database (1996 is the most recent year for which final data are available). For the SIC codes 27xx (Printing and publishing), the total emissions for volatile organic compounds (VOC), nitrogen oxides (NOx) and hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) are as follows (in tons per year):
| SIC | Subsector | VOC | NOx | HAP |
| 2711 | Newspapers | 1,579 | 111 | 106 |
| 2721 | Periodicals | 6,033 | 202 | 4,288 |
| 2731 | Book Publishing | 2,668 | 126 | 23 |
| 2732 | Book Printing | 1,593 | 70 | 18 |
| 2741 | Miscellaneous Publishing | 665 | 13 | 19 |
| 2751 | Commercial Printing Letterpress(1977) | 1,705 | 32 | |
| 2752 | Commercial Printing Lithograph | 20,195 | 781 | 2,503 |
| 2753 | Engraving And Plate Printing (1977) | 16 | 2 | |
| 2754 | Commercial Printing, Gravure | 31,600 | 573 | 3,812 |
| 2759 | Commercial Printing, NEC | 12,070 | 300 | 956 |
| 2761 | Manifold Business Forms | 566 | 15 | 29 |
| 2771 | Greeting Card Publishing | 863 | 35 | 58 |
| 2782 | Blankbooks & Looseleaf Binders | 52 | 3 | 26 |
| 2789 | Bookbinding And Related Work | 1,373 | 203 | 18 |
| 2791 | Typesetting | 103 | 5 | 1 |
| 2796 | Platemaking Services | 161 | 18 | 102 |
| Other | 4 | |||
| Total, all printing and publishing subsectors | 81,246 | 2,489 | 11,959 |
The sector accounts for a substantial volume of VOCs. Emissions of NOx are much smaller, the power and heating demands of printing processes being modest. It is clear from the four digit breakdown that some printing processes emit much larger quantities of volatile organics than others, but a quantitative comparison would require data normalized to production volume for each process..
Risks associated with printing processes are primarily associated with solvents and VOCs.
For all the pollution prevention fuss, there seem to be few regulations specifically directed toward the printing sector. MACT rules are directed more toward the manufacture of ink than toward its use.
*** [description of the range of environmental assistance programs directed toward printers -- Great Printers Project, etc.]
One of the OECA Sector Notebooks concerns the printing and publishing sentor. It is available at http://www.epa.gov/compliance/resources/publications/assistance/sectors/notebooks/printing.html
The sector is served by one of the OECA Compliance Assistance Centers, at http://www.pneac.org