Do you know all this about green printing?

As one of the four great inventions of ancient my country, printing has made great contributions to the progress of human civilization. However, in the offset printing process of newspapers, books, textbooks, supplementary teaching materials, food, and pharmaceutical packaging, alcohol and ether chemicals must be added to complete the printing, and the pollution problems caused by these chemicals have always existed and have never been fundamentally solved. In recent years, my country's printing industry has been guided by the new development concept and insisted on greening, digitalization, intelligence, and integration as the development direction, and green printing has entered our lives.

In order to better implement the green printing strategy and promote the development of green printing, many companies have made great efforts in source reduction, process control and end-of-pipe treatment in recent years.

In terms of source reduction, many companies are gradually promoting the use of more environmentally friendly raw materials and auxiliary materials. For example, the use of soybean environmentally friendly ink, water-based varnish, alcohol-free fountain solution, environmentally friendly car wash water, plant starch powder spray, environmentally friendly adhesives that do not contain benzene or xylene, and gradually increasing the use of paper that has passed the Sustainable Forest Certification (FSC). In terms of process control, some large printing companies also reduce the generation of solid waste by adopting centralized air supply, centralized water supply and centralized ink supply systems. In the terminal treatment link, printing companies mainly carry out the treatment of waste gas, wastewater and hazardous waste.

At present, green printing has been applied in many industries in many places in my country. In the book printing market, such as the printing of primary and secondary school textbooks across the country, green printing has been fully covered for many consecutive years; children's books have always promoted green printing, from the selection of paper, ink, adhesives, to the selection of production processes, the most environmentally friendly materials and methods are used. At the same time, green printing is also being actively promoted in the fields of bills, tickets, and food and drug packaging boxes. As of 2019, more than 1,100 companies have passed the green printing certification, and a large number of environmentally friendly raw and auxiliary materials, production processes and pollution prevention and control equipment have been widely used. Various regions including Guangdong, Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Shandong and other places have successively issued pollutant emission standards for the printing industry, which has improved the environmental protection level of the printing industry.

In addition, in order to implement the "dual carbon" goal, green printing is also combined with scientific and technological innovation to innovate printing methods, such as green digital printing machine technology and nano green printing technology, which are used to varying degrees in different occasions.

China's printing industry is developing in a greener and smarter direction with the concept of environmental protection and low carbon. The new concepts, new technologies, new products and new equipment that have emerged have also added new impetus to the development of the industry. In the process of green development, the printing industry still has great potential to be tapped, and can make more important contributions to the recycling of resources and the "blue sky defense war" in the future.

Review expert: Han Pengfei, Associate Researcher, Carbon Neutrality Research Center, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

China Association for Science and Technology Department of Science Popularization

Xinhuanet

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