Laurel Brunner

Laurel Brunner: The Meaning of Life

08 aug 2016
Categorie:

Life Cycle AnalysisLife Cycle Analysis (LCA) is expensive, takes a long time and can be fiendishly complex. Companies who undertake it generally do so in order to demonstrate the environmental credentials of their product or service. But there are other more nuanced reasons for doing LCA, such as providing proof points for marketing statements and guidance for product designers and engineers. An LCA can also help demonstrate regulatory compliance and be an aid to sales and marketing projects. It’s obviously a useful tool for carbon offsetting and for carbon credits.

HP Indigo has done an LCA for a flexible coffee pouch printed using three different printing methods: the HP Indigo 20000 digital press, Central Impression (CI) Flexo and gravure. The goal of the study was to provide data that would help HP show how the HP Indigo 20000 digital press, positioned in the market for packaging applications, stacks up against the analogue competition. There’s a lot to play for because digital print methods currently account for only a teensy share of a market HP estimates will be worth $114 billion by 2020.

The study was conducted by EarthShift Global, a specialist LCA company, following ISO 14040 and ISO 14044. These standards outline requirements for comparative LCA studies. The functional unit for the study is a coffee pouch made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and printed on all exterior surfaces.

The conclusions consider the environmental impact for 3,000m2 and 5,000m2 of printed material. These quantities of print are not necessarily typical in the current market for flexible packaging printing, which has to support very large runs so most of it’s still produced with CI flexo and gravure. But today’s model is changing and run lengths are falling. Brand owners want closer engagement with their target buyers, so they demand faster time to market for a growing range of Fast Moving Consumable Goods (FMCG). Increasingly they want to be able to customise products for different sectors, geographies and seasons. Customised packaging for FMCG, only possible with digital printing, can yield consistently high response rates which brand owners love. These are powerful arguments for using of digital printing over conventional methods, which lack digital printing’s timeliness and flexibility.

Pouches printed on the HP Indigo 20000 had the lowest environmental impact for quantities up to 5,000m2. This LCA demonstrates that digital printing offers a compelling alternative to conventional analogue methods, with the added benefit of producing highly effective bespoke packages. Equally important is the fact that digital printing has a much lower environmental impact overhead than gravure or flexo printing. It is the way forward for brand owners and for the environment.

Laurel Brunner

Verdigris_logo

The Verdigris project is an industry initiative intended to raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. It provides a weekly commentary to help printing companies keep up to date with environmental standards, and how environmentally friendly business management can help improve their bottom lines. Verdigris is supported by the following companies: Agfa GraphicsDigital DotsEFIFespaHeidelbergHPKodakRicohSplash PRUnity Publishingand Xeikon.

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Laurel Brunner’s Verdigris Blog: Climate scientists and carbon accountants

19 jul 2016
Categorie:

carbon-calculatorEvery week week we get bombarded with new information about the dismal condition of the planet and its inhabitants. But sometimes we come across ideas and initiatives that are actually inspiring.

For instance an Egyptian mathematician has told us about his formula for calculating the energy consumed when a single page is printed on an A4 toner device, either mono or in colour. The developer is an electrical engineer familiar with digital printers and mathematics. The model is interesting because it’s dependent on the page coverage rather than the power as expressed in watts. The objective appears to be to come up with new environmental criteria that can be used as part of the evaluation of a digital printer, by measuring its energy efficiency, based on page coverage. Such a calculation should make the evaluation more accurate than a straight power measurement.

The Egyptian formula calculates the total energy used to print a single page in Joules. It takes into account the time required to print 0% and 100% of a page in seconds, along with the current and how much voltage is used. The page coverage is a variable, so the formula can work for many different applications. This is an interesting concept that we will be discussing at our next ISO meeting which takes place in a few days time.

What is almost more interesting is the fact that all over the world engineers and scientists are considering how to make print’s environmental impact more accountable. It is encouraging that individuals are working on ideas that help the graphics industry improve its carbon footprint and that print buyers have a growing range of tools to inform their investment decisions.

We are still a long way from having a definitive list of environmental criteria that printers and their customers can use to do this. But we are moving in that direction and such a list will also assist manufacturers in their development planning. We can already see evidence that the environment is considered in manufacturers’ research and development. Ricoh is committed to developing machines that support the circular economy; Kodak and Agfa continue to invest in processless plate technology; and the lean and green message is slowly reaching printing company owners. They’re even starting to listen a little.

The calculation of energy efficiency is confusing and difficult, but we are starting to see innovative approaches to how it might be done. It is just a matter of time before we have models for evaluating the overall energy consumption of printing systems. The work coming out of Egypt as well as the contributors to ISO standards, is part of a much bigger picture.

Laurel Brunner

Verdigris_logo

The Verdigris project is an industry initiative intended to raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. It provides a weekly commentary to help printing companies keep up to date with environmental standards, and how environmentally friendly business management can help improve their bottom lines. Verdigris is supported by the following companies: Agfa GraphicsDigital DotsEFIFespaHeidelbergHPKodakRicohSplash PRUnity Publishingand Xeikon.

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Laurel Brunner: Climate scientists and carbon accountants

19 jul 2016
Categorie:

carbon-calculatorEvery week we get bombarded with new information about the dismal condition of the planet and its inhabitants. But sometimes we come across ideas and initiatives that are actually inspiring.

For instance an Egyptian mathematician has told us about his formula for calculating the energy consumed when a single page is printed on an A4 toner device, either mono or in colour. The developer is an electrical engineer familiar with digital printers and mathematics. The model is interesting because it’s dependent on the page coverage rather than the power as expressed in watts. The objective appears to be to come up with new environmental criteria that can be used as part of the evaluation of a digital printer, by measuring its energy efficiency, based on page coverage. Such a calculation should make the evaluation more accurate than a straight power measurement.

The Egyptian formula calculates the total energy used to print a single page in Joules. It takes into account the time required to print 0% and 100% of a page in seconds, along with the current and how much voltage is used. The page coverage is a variable, so the formula can work for many different applications. This is an interesting concept that we will be discussing at our next ISO meeting which takes place in a few days time.

What is almost more interesting is the fact that all over the world engineers and scientists are considering how to make print’s environmental impact more accountable. It is encouraging that individuals are working on ideas that help the graphics industry improve its carbon footprint and that print buyers have a growing range of tools to inform their investment decisions.

We are still a long way from having a definitive list of environmental criteria that printers and their customers can use to do this. But we are moving in that direction and such a list will also assist manufacturers in their development planning. We can already see evidence that the environment is considered in manufacturers’ research and development. Ricoh is committed to developing machines that support the circular economy; Kodak and Agfa continue to invest in processless plate technology; and the lean and green message is slowly reaching printing company owners. They’re even starting to listen a little.

The calculation of energy efficiency is confusing and difficult, but we are starting to see innovative approaches to how it might be done. It is just a matter of time before we have models for evaluating the overall energy consumption of printing systems. The work coming out of Egypt as well as the contributors to ISO standards, is part of a much bigger picture.

Laurel Brunner

Verdigris_logo

The Verdigris project is an industry initiative intended to raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. It provides a weekly commentary to help printing companies keep up to date with environmental standards, and how environmentally friendly business management can help improve their bottom lines. Verdigris is supported by the following companies: Agfa GraphicsDigital DotsEFIFespaHeidelbergHPKodakRicohSplash PRUnity Publishingand Xeikon.

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Laurel Brunner Verdigris Blog: Sustainable by Design

13 jul 2016
Categorie:

Platnum collageWe go on a lot about what printers can do to reduce their environmental impact. But we hardly ever mention the contribution graphic designers make to sustainability. As with colour management, a designer’s decisions during the creative stages of a project, can have a profound impact on the recyclability of the final results. Don’t let anyone tell you that making informed choices compromises a designer’s creativity. For those designers who take the trouble to get informed, the opposite is more likely.

The most important consideration of all is to select the print method best suited to the project. Consider this in the context of minimising waste and encouraging recycling. If the project is for a limited number of copies, the obvious choice is digital: produce only what you want and produce it close to end users.

Litho printing uses a lot of energy and consumables, but will be the preferred choice for longer runs because the energy per copy will be less. Litho often gets accused of producing excess waste, but modern press control systems have made makeready much quicker and less wasteful than it used to be. Perhaps the biggest consideration when using litho, is to work with a printing company located close to where you want your documents. Transporting print products to remote locations, involves emissions and pollution that with a little planning you can probably avoid.

Litho consumables such as blankets and printing plates, are widely recycled. Traditional offset inks based on petroleum are noxious, but they can be recycled for instance as low grade fuel, or mixed to create new black ink. Petroleum based inks also emit Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) which are serious pollutants and toxic to human health. The more sustainable alternative is to use vegetable oil based inks which contain fewer unpleasant chemicals than inks based on petroleum.

For short run work printed digitally the quality expectation and format will help the designer decide whether to go inkjet or toner. In either case consider the waste policies of the printer and the manufacturer who supplies the machine. Are ink containers recycled? Or are they sent to landfill? Environmentally aware printers will have processes in place to ensure that waste chemicals can be recycled or processed into non-hazardous materials. And are there processes in place to recycle wooden pallets or plastic packaging? Asking about these policies can help simplify investment decisions.

Designers should also be thinking about the substrates they want to use. Apart from the fact that the substrate influences colour appearance, environmentally aware designers will want to use a material and printing process that discourages waste and encourages recycling. Can the substrate be recycled? Does the printing method avoid waste? Consider ink coverage in the design and manage colour so that ink usage is optimised.

Considerations such as these and many others are not raised often enough in the initial stages of print media creation. However a designer’s choices can improve the environmental impact of their projects. And very likely those choices will also improve the colour quality of their work.

Laurel Brunner

Verdigris_logo

The Verdigris project is an industry initiative intended to raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. It provides a weekly commentary to help printing companies keep up to date with environmental standards, and how environmentally friendly business management can help improve their bottom lines. Verdigirs is supported by the following companies: Agfa GraphicsDigital DotsEFIFespaHeidelbergHPKodakRicoh,Splash PRUnity Publishing and Xeikon.

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Laurel Brunner: Sustainable by Design

13 jul 2016
Categorie:

Platnum collageWe go on a lot about what printers can do to reduce their environmental impact. But we hardly ever mention the contribution graphic designers make to sustainability. As with colour management, a designer’s decisions during the creative stages of a project, can have a profound impact on the recyclability of the final results. Don’t let anyone tell you that making informed choices compromises a designer’s creativity. For those designers who take the trouble to get informed, the opposite is more likely.

The most important consideration of all is to select the print method best suited to the project. Consider this in the context of minimising waste and encouraging recycling. If the project is for a limited number of copies, the obvious choice is digital: produce only what you want and produce it close to end users.

Litho printing uses a lot of energy and consumables, but will be the preferred choice for longer runs because the energy per copy will be less. Litho often gets accused of producing excess waste, but modern press control systems have made makeready much quicker and less wasteful than it used to be. Perhaps the biggest consideration when using litho, is to work with a printing company located close to where you want your documents. Transporting print products to remote locations, involves emissions and pollution that with a little planning you can probably avoid.

Litho consumables such as blankets and printing plates, are widely recycled. Traditional offset inks based on petroleum are noxious, but they can be recycled for instance as low grade fuel, or mixed to create new black ink. Petroleum based inks also emit Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) which are serious pollutants and toxic to human health. The more sustainable alternative is to use vegetable oil based inks which contain fewer unpleasant chemicals than inks based on petroleum.

For short run work printed digitally the quality expectation and format will help the designer decide whether to go inkjet or toner. In either case consider the waste policies of the printer and the manufacturer who supplies the machine. Are ink containers recycled? Or are they sent to landfill? Environmentally aware printers will have processes in place to ensure that waste chemicals can be recycled or processed into non-hazardous materials. And are there processes in place to recycle wooden pallets or plastic packaging? Asking about these policies can help simplify investment decisions.

Designers should also be thinking about the substrates they want to use. Apart from the fact that the substrate influences colour appearance, environmentally aware designers will want to use a material and printing process that discourages waste and encourages recycling. Can the substrate be recycled? Does the printing method avoid waste? Consider ink coverage in the design and manage colour so that ink usage is optimised.

Considerations such as these and many others are not raised often enough in the initial stages of print media creation. However a designer’s choices can improve the environmental impact of their projects. And very likely those choices will also improve the colour quality of their work.

Laurel Brunner

 

Verdigris_logo

The Verdigris project is an industry initiative intended to raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. It provides a weekly commentary to help printing companies keep up to date with environmental standards, and how environmentally friendly business management can help improve their bottom lines. Verdigirs is supported by the following companies: Agfa GraphicsDigital DotsEFIFespaHeidelbergHPKodakRicoh,Splash PRUnity Publishing and Xeikon.

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Wild Format Technology Is All About You

11 jul 2016
Categorie:

This is the first in a series of articles explaining how you can use wide format digital printing technology to produce exciting and innovative media concepts. The Wild Format Technology series takes you on a journey into a world where your imagination can truly go wild.

Wild Format digital printing lets you express yourself as never before. It’s a technology for printing on any surface, in full, glorious and enduring colour. We call it Wild Format, because what you do with it is up to you and there are no boundaries to what is possible. You can totally let your imagination go, and express yourself in print using technology that’s cheap, accessible and available on demand. Wild format digital printing gives you unprecedented creative print possibilities, whether you want to change the pictures on the wall, or revamp your wardrobe. It’s all about you and turning your ideas into reality.

3D HP PageWide HQ

HP’s PageWide technology can be used to print anything from newspapers to posters. It can also be used to produce three dimensional objects.

How we got here

There’s nothing new in the idea of print, but with digital printing everything is different. The technology makes it simple and inexpensive for anyone to create and produce their own printed materials from silks to ceramics. Wild format digital print is about printing on any suface at any size, and at a quality you won’t believe.

We didn’t get here overnight. The systems used to create low cost bespoke digital print have been around for years. The technology has steadily evolved to get better and better, producing printed pages that look at least as good as their traditional, costly and complicated equivalents. We think digital, and digital print is a natural extension for our nimble digital mindsets and fragmented communications. We manage our lives via social media and mobile apps and we live an online life. We always want more and we want it now and we can use print to differentiate our ideas and messages.

Most of us get that digital printing adds a new dimension to how we communicate, so we are comfortable using print as another component in our communications models. We’ve been thinking bespoke birthday and anniversary cards, and personalised party invitations for a few years now. We’re comfortable ordering customised postcards from a mobile device. It’s easy and cheap to print photos from a mobile phone, or get customised business cards from a website.

Maybe you print photobooks of your holidays or print special Facebook diaries. Maybe you’ve created anniversary memory books for special occasions. Whatever you’re used to printing right now is just the start of what else you might want to create. Now you have many more options because digital printing technology is moving at such a speed. This is where Wild Format comes in.

Wild format takes you further

Wild format digital print offers a whole other dimension for individual expression, one that lets you share your ideas as never before and going far beyond conventional print formats. You can use digital printing technology to take your ideas much further than party invites. How do you fancy printing your own designs onto wallpaper and flooring? Would you like to update your home with new textiles and bespoke printed doors? Or how about new personalised ceramic tiles for your bathroom and kitchen? And banners for your next party? Wild format digital printing technology makes all of this, and much more, possible.

Wide format digital printing devices are very similar to the inkjet printers that many people have on their desktops. HP for instance uses the same basic thermal inkjet technology in its desktop printers and in its line of Latex and Designjet printers. The difference with wide format digital printing is that the inkjet printheads are configured to print across a very large width, as much as five metres in the case of printing engines from several manufacturers. The massive range of colours, ink durability and flexibility, and of available substrates, is unprecedented. They give you the opportunity to create printed banners, signs, shop displays, carpets, glass panels and even wood and metal sheets. All of these materials can be printed with your own designs and because this stuff is printed with digital technology, the production process and output is affordable too. We are just at the beginning of an amazing journey that lets you turn your imagination loose.

Over the coming series of articles we’ll be writing about the technology, the materials options, how you get your prints finished and what you need to know to get perfect results. The Wild Format article series is about giving you the know-how to exploit this amazing technology. We look forward to hearing from you, if you have any specific puzzles you’d like us to help you solve.

Laurel Brunner

The Wild Format guides are intended to expand awareness and understanding of the craziness that can be created on wide format digital printing devices, from floors to lampshades and everything in between.

These guides are made possible by a group of manufacturers working together with Digital Dots. Together we hope you enjoy the articles and that you put into practise what you learn. If you want to talk about it, go to our LinkedIn group via this link.

Enjoy and Go Wild!

This article is sponsored by…

Agfa – Digital Dots – EFI – Esko – Fujifilm – HP – Mimaki


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Laurel Brunner: Waterwash flexo plates save the environment

07 jul 2016
Categorie:

Kodak Flexcell PlateProducing flexo plates was never a clean process. At drupa Laurel Brunner discovered that Kodak has found a solution. Read her Verdigris blog about how Kodak has made waterwashed flexo plates which do their bit to make our industry more sustainable.


 

 

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Laurel Brunner Verdigris Blog: Waterwash flexo plates

07 jul 2016
Categorie:

Kodak Flexcell PlateKodak CEO Jeff Clarke made a bold admission during the company’s drupa press conference. He said that: “the print industry is a dirty industry … one of the things we can do is to clean up the dirty chemicals.” A key technology for achieving this goal is water wash digital flexo photopolymer plates, processed using water.

Flexo plates are widely used for in packaging print production. Packaging is just about the only form of print that cannot be replaced with some sort of electronic equivalent, so packaging applications remarkably attractive for a growing range of equipment manufacturers. Many of these companies such as HP and Xeikon are digital pioneers hoping to sell digital presses to printers getting into short-run packaging. But currently digital printing makes up only a small fraction of the global packaging business. Most packaging is still produced using conventional printing methods, such as flexography and gravure. Both of these processes have scope to improve their environmental footprints, with flexo leading the way.

The flexo printing method can print on virtually any substrate. This includes metals, plastic, thin films and paper, so it has a very broad application. The problem from an environmental perspective is that it uses a lot of rather nasty chemicals. This is why Jeff Clarke’s unexpectedly outspoken comment is absolutely spot on.

Kodak is in the vanguard of developments to improve the environmental friendliness of flexo printing with its Flexcel NX plates. These water wash plates, do not depend on solvents to create a plate image. This is a good thing and what is even better is that Kodak is not alone. Fujifilm presented its Flenex water wash flexo plates, as did Asahi.

There have traditionally been quality limitations with this type of technology. Digital photopolymer flexo plates tend to lose their highlight dots when processed with aggressive solvents. They can break up at 5% tones which means that tonal transitions are bumpy instead of smooth, so a technology which can ensure stable, small dots produces better quality. Another difficulty has been the durability and abrasion resistance of these plates along with efficient ink transfer and problems associated with ink build up. The water wash plates shown at drupa all offered answers to these problems. But the most impressive was the Kodak technology, which has been under development for many years.

Instead of a Laser Ablative Mask system (LAMS) the Kodak plates are based on thin film layers, engineered to protect the polymers from oxygen. The thin layers make it easier to ensure precise dot shapes that are robust, as well as being able to print very small dots. Kodak’s competitors are working on new digital flexo plates able to achieve as good results. Kodak is working on Ultra NX the next generation of Flexcel NX system, so we can expect continuous improvements to flexo’s environmental footprint. This is excellent news because let’s face it, brands without a stated Corporate Social Responsibility policy only want sustainability if it comes with the same performance and at the same cost as conventional equivalents.

Laurel Brunner

Verdigris is an international organisation reporting the sustainability of print and other media and sharing our findings with the international printing and publishing communities.

The Verdigris project is an industry initiative intended to raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. It provides a weekly commentary to help printing companies keep up to date with environmental standards, and how environmentally friendly business management can help improve their bottom lines. Verdigris is supported by the following companies: Agfa GraphicsEFIEpson, FespaHPKodakKornit, RicohSpindrift, Splash PRUnity Publishing and Xeikon.

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Laurel Brunner: drupa 2020 and what we didn´t do in 2016

23 jun 2016
Categorie: ,

drupa-2020Laurel Brunner talks about how we missed to pay attention to sustainability during drupa 2016. She suggests to start preparing for 2020 already to make sustainability a focal point for that drupa. Read about our role and what the drupa organisation could improve, in her blog on our Blokboek articles page.


 

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Laurel Brunner: Preparing for drupa 2020

23 jun 2016
Categorie:

Now that drupa 2016’s over, we can start hoping that at drupa 2020 the environmental will be in sharper focus. This year’s organisers missed a great opportunity to take the sustainability lead.

Drupa 2016’s attendance and sales numbers show that print is in rude health. Investment into print technology is on the up, so why should drupa bother with promoting print’s sustainability? The simple answer is to support exhibitors and the printing industry. And 2020 is an important year for European companies and citizens because it’s when the European Union’s current Environmental Action Plan (EAP) concludes. One of the plan’s three key objectives is “to turn the Union into a resource-efficient, green, and competitive low-carbon economy”. What a gift for print and drupa 2020!

The printing industry already supports this goal with extensive recycling of used printing plates and printed paper in most geographies around the world. Europeans recycle 74% of paper used. Japan labels print to tell consumers how it can be recycled. Printed matter has a one-time carbon footprint. Printing is one of the few industries with a dedicated ISO team developing environmental standards for printing companies and machinery manufacturers. Print has established supply chains for recycling and supports the notion of a circular economy on a massive scale. These are messages that can encourage wider use of print and more visitors to drupa, including agencies, designers and even consumers.

Messe Düsseldorf has a chance to take a global lead to demonstrate print’s sustainability. For drupa 2020, how about random sustainability facts on hall signage: “Did you know that 98% of printing plates are recycled for use in building materials and vehicle manufacturing?” Or “Use and reuse paper because it can be recycled more than five times!” Improving waste handling advice would be good too. At this year’s show there was virtually no additional emphasis for visitors on how they can recycle all those print samples. Bins at the exits perhaps? You get the idea.

A more radical suggestion is to give exhibitors the opportunity to print what the local community wants, instead of random samples that have to go into the waste stream. Messe Düsseldorf could start an outreach programme to work with publishers to produce textbooks and the like that will have value for reuse. We spoke to a number of exhibitors at drupa 2016 who liked the idea of this.

The Messe could also consider promoting its own environmental credentials, based on drupa 2020’s energy use, and measures for managing emissions. A series of awareness seminars for brand owners and consumers might also support print. Print is often taken for granted as an old medium, with a heavy environmental tread. Why not position it as the trendy and cool alternative to digital media, the medium that uniquely supports the three Rs: reduce, reuse, recycle.

The Verdigris project is an industry initiative intended to raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. It provides a weekly commentary to help printing companies keep up to date with environmental standards, and how environmentally friendly business management can help improve their bottom lines. Verdigris is supported by the following companies: Agfa Graphics, Spindrift.click, EFI, Epson Fespa, HP, Kodak, Ricoh, Splash PR, Unity Publishing and Xeikon.

Laurel Brunner

Verdigris is an international organisation reporting the sustainability of print and other media and sharing our findings with the international printing and publishing communities.

The Verdigris project is an industry initiative intended to raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. It provides a weekly commentary to help printing companies keep up to date with environmental standards, and how environmentally friendly business management can help improve their bottom lines. Verdigris is supported by the following companies: Agfa GraphicsDigital DotsEFIFespaHeidelbergHPKodakRicohSplash PRUnity Publishing and Xeikon.


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Laurel Brunner: how to make your own paper – Epson Paperlab Update

13 jun 2016
Categorie: ,

Epson PaperLabWith Paperlab Epson introduced a revolutionaire way to make your own paper. At drupa Laurel spoke to Seiko Epson’s Minoru Usui, CEO and president of the company since 2008, about the status of this remarkable project. Read all about it in here Verdigris column on our article page.


 

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Laurel Brunner: Epson Paperlab Update

12 jun 2016
Categorie:

Epson PaperLabAt drupa we were privileged to interview Seiko Epson’s Minoru Usui, CEO and president of the company since 2008. Mr Usui outlined his vision for Epson’s amazing PaperLab technology. PaperLab is an integrated system for producing new paper from waste paper without using water. PaperLab shreds office paper and recombines the cellulose using a binder to create a material that can be flattened and calendared into new papers. The new papers can be coloured and can include Optical Brightening Agents.

PaperLab is fundamental to Epson’s goal of cutting energy usage and improving paper recycling. The company wants the office sector to convert from toner based printing devices to inkjet machines. Epson considers inkjet to be more sustainable because of its lower energy requirement in offices. Making ones own paper also reduces the need to buy in office paper and dispose of it, and the associated transport emissions. Mr Usui wants “inkjet prints to be aligned with PaperLab in these markets in the future”.

The received wisdom within the paper industry is that toner prints are easier to deink and recycle than their inkjet equivalents, but Mr Usui does not agree. The PaperLab technology can cope with any type of print, but the PaperLab deinking process actually works better with inkjet printed raw materials than with toner prints. PaperLab’s special binder is based on a glue-like polymer which binds shredded fibres to create new paper from old in a circular process. The mix of input paper is unpredictable, so fibres can be recycled beyond the usual six or seven times, Mr Usui says. The waste PaperLab produces is “negligible”. In the future the technology will accept other types of fibre based substrates as well as office papers.

Epson has a deep commitment to improving the environmental impact of its products, and to helping its customers to improve their environmental sustainability. Mr Usui says that “in order to achieve this dream we must develop PaperLab to create a sustainable world” . PaperLab reduces the energy required to deink and recycle to paper in a process designed to be kind to the environment. Mr Usui’s strategy is to start deploying PaperLab in office environments, particularly places that have to dispose of high amounts of confidential documents. Such documents can be recycled with PaperLab, cutting the risk of documents falling into the wrong hands because they never leave the building. There are also huge savings in transport and processing emissions associated with secure disposal.

PaperLab goes into beta testing in Japan later this year and will be installed in other geographies in 2017, via Epson’s sales network. The company is also looking into different business models especially for emerging markets which are sensitive to printing costs. Inkjet technology is appropriate in these geographies because it reduces energy use and has cheap print costs. In three years time PaperLab is expected to make a ¥10 billion contribution to Seiko Epson’s revenues, rising to ¥50 billion in 10 years time. Mr Usui told us that “to be truly innovative you have to come up with things people haven’t thought about before”. PaperLab is just that.

Laurel Brunner

Verdigris is an international organisation reporting the sustainability of print and other media and sharing our findings with the international printing and publishing communities.

The Verdigris project is an industry initiative intended to raise awareness of print’s positive environmental impact. It provides a weekly commentary to help printing companies keep up to date with environmental standards, and how environmentally friendly business management can help improve their bottom lines. Verdigris is supported by the following companies: Agfa GraphicsDigital DotsEFIFespaHeidelbergHPKodakRicohSplash PRUnity Publishing and Xeikon.

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