Environmental Impacts from the Printing Process- an LCA -Perspective, 1996 International Printing & Graphic Arts Conference Proceedings

Rolf Dalhielm, IMT

Ulrik Axelsson, IMT

This paper is concerning a project called “Life-Cycle Analysis for printed products”, conducted by The Institute of Media Technology, IMT together with concerned printing companies. The results presented in this report emanate from extensive field inventories, conducted in five different printing companies. The results have then been processed in different computer softwares. Before the project, different Life-Cycle Analysis have been conducted. In this presentation environmental burdens from the printing process have been studied in order to allocate the environmental impact down to a specific occurrence in the printing process, Our point of view is that printing companies today are obliged by environmental legislation and of course our market, were we sell to all other kinds of industries, to take a comprehensive look upon and responsibility for environmental impacts generated throughout the life cycle of a product. These signals are sent to us i.e. the fact that Environmental Managemant Systems (ISO 14000, EMAS and BS 7750) in a great number are implemented in companies in Sweden and the rest of the world. The problem has been to connect different environmental impacts throughout the life-cycle of a printed product to a activity in the printing company. For the printing industry as for other branches, environmental issues have become more and more important as competitive arguments between companies. Pressure from authorities, “green” organisations but above all from the own market is increasing. As a result of the international environmental conference in Rio, authorities and the general public have gained a more comprehensive view of environmental issues. Environmental work today is not only a question of different separate compounds and their environmental effects. This more comprehensive view has been developed to be a important tool in companies work with environmental questions. However, the problem so far has been to gather and evaluate different environmental effects and to compare them. Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA) is one way to estimate the environmental impact of a product during its whole life cycle. The LCA uses a “cradle to grave” perspective and can give a fairly accurate descriptions of the real environmental impact. Life-Cycle Analysis has today been developed to be a powerful tool to quantify the environmental impact of different products. Regarding printed products, LCA-studies have so far only considered the pulp- and paper production. The general opinion so far has been that, since the pulp- and paper production has a high energy demand and its use of environmental hazardous chemicals in for example the bleaching process, it stands for all the environmental impacts from printed products.