Packaging Printing Projects Required to Use Eco-Friendly Inks

On January 23, 2013, the smoggy weather in Hangzhou had passed. Although this weather did not bring too great an impact on the lives of Hangzhou residents, it is true that during this period the number of patients with respiratory infections increased at the major hospitals. This is undoubtedly another alarm bell rung by environmental pollution.

Haze, also called dust-haze (smoke haze), refers to the condition in which particles such as dust, sulfuric acid, nitric acid and organic hydrocarbons in the air make the atmosphere turbid, blur vision and worsen visibility. When horizontal visibility is less than 10,000 meters, the visibility obstruction caused by such an aerosol system composed of non-water substances is called haze (Haze) or dust-haze (Dust-haze). Haze is relatively thick, reaching about 1-3 kilometers. Haze particles are distributed fairly evenly, and dust-haze particles are relatively small, ranging from 0.001 microns to 10 microns with an average diameter of about 1-2 microns, so the particles floating in the air cannot be seen with the naked eye. Because haze is composed of particles such as dust, sulfuric acid and nitric acid, it scatters more of the longer wavelengths of light, which is why haze appears yellow or orange-gray.

Air pollution is an important cause of smoggy weather, and for the printing industry, the factor that may pollute the atmosphere is printing ink. Ink is an important raw and auxiliary material for packaging printing and one of the important pollution sources as well. The 'Twelfth Five-Year Plan for Air Pollution Prevention and Control in Key Regions' issued last December also set requirements for inks used in packaging printing, clearly stating that 'new packaging printing projects must use inks bearing the environmental label' and requiring that 'the control of volatile organic compound pollution be made an important part of the environmental impact assessment of construction projects, with strict pollution control measures adopted.'

While requiring packaging printing enterprises to use eco-friendly inks, the Plan also called for eliminating outdated production capacity in industries that emit volatile organic compounds, phasing out traditional ink production facilities with a capacity below 300 tons per year, banning the production of benzene-containing solvent-based inks, and eliminating all coating, adhesive and ink production facilities that lack volatile organic compound collection, recovery and purification equipment. Other heavily polluting volatile organic compounds should be phased out, and processes and products for which the reduction and control of volatile organic compounds is not economically feasible should be discontinued.

The Plan also proposed studying and formulating certification standards for environment-label products among solvent-containing products such as coatings, inks, adhesives, building boards, furniture and dry cleaning.

The Plan not only sets requirements for new packaging printing projects, but also stipulates that 'the packaging printing industry must use inks that meet environmental protection requirements; drying workshops must be equipped with adsorption devices such as activated carbon to recover organic solvents, and organic waste gas in the workshop must be purified with a purification efficiency of over 90%.'

—This article is reprinted from China Packaging Network (pack.cn); original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-361975.html