Can you print books more sustainably?

Take on the carbon footprint of book printing

There are many ways for a book manufacturer to reduce the carbon footprint of their printing. An increasingly popular option is onshoring, in which books are produced closer to the end market, which means less pollution from transport and greater quality control. Ever since COVID proved how fragile the print and distribute method is, onshoring has become the way to go. 

Or you could invest in green energy to power your presses and production. While these are all efforts worth considering, the biggest impact you can make in terms of sustainable printing is by providing readers and publishers with books that can be easily recycled.

Why the printing ink you use matters?

Paper demand is high and supply chains have a hard time keeping up. This issue has only increased with rising demands for paper packaging materials, in the wake of COVID and booming e-commerce, making recycled paper essential for book production. 

For graphic paper, recycling means deinking the pages to create pure white paper pulp that can be reused for new books or other applications. The extent to which this process is successful, is determined by the type of ink used. When ink particles are too big, as in the case of UV or liquid toner, or too small, like with Inkjet and Flexo, they will stay in the pulp. The result is a colored foam on top of the pulp that will need to be removed mechanically and treated in a separate waste line. Which makes for a smaller amount of white paper that can be recycled.

That’s why choosing the right printing technologies matters, for the deinkability of your books, the recyclability of your paper and by extent, to meet your customer’s expectations.