Recently, we got in touch with the top management of Yansefu India, one of India’s leading packaging ink manufacturers, to learn about how the ink industry is acting in sustainable ways and what the future of sustainability in the ink industry looks like. Yansefu’s management team also shared with us the company’s sustainability goals and its achievements in this direction so far.

“Sustainability is the new strategic mantra in the printing and packaging sector these days. The reason is, consumers are now more cognizant about the safety and compliance than ever before since they have resources available to inspect whether the claims done by the brand owners regarding the product and packaging safety are true or not.

“There is no specific definition for ‘Sustainability’ pertaining to printing inks till now. However, in this competitive world, where sustainability is the major priority, every industry defines the term distinctively as ‘bio-degradable’, ‘bio-renewable’, ‘recyclable’ and ‘environment friendly’ – in order to market their products. Every sector from food manufacturing to packaging is ready to pay high price for sustainable products when it comes to consumer’s demands,” says Neelakamal Mohapatra, vice president, R&D/ innovation department at Yansefu India.

Common terms in sustainability

The most common definition of a few terminologies used with respect to sustainable packaging materials, particularly printing inks are:

Biodegradable: Biodegradability is the ability of a material to be broken down by microorganisms. More relevant term for sustainability is compostability.

Bio-renewable: According to the USA National Association of Printing Ink Manufacturers (NAPIM), a bio-renewable ink is made up of raw materials such as resins, gums, oils, waxes, solvents and other polymer building blocks, derived from natural resources such as tree, plant, insect and/or animal materials.

Eco-friendly: The terms eco-friendly or environment-friendly may generally use for ‘water based’ and ‘vegetable oil based systems’, basically made up of renewable ingredients.

Carbon footprint of printed materials

According to EUPIA, the carbon footprint of the printed materials are generally used as measure to the environmental impact of printing inks and other packaging materials. As per some studies conducted by EUPIA and printing ink manufacturers, it is concluded that the contribution of the printing ink to the carbon footprint of a printed article is in between the range of 1 and 3% of the total carbon footprint of a printed article. The few factors responsible for this variation are types of printing inks, applicable substrates, printing processes, and the number of articles printed.

The extent of carbon footprint of printing inks is very less, yet inks attract great attention in terms of the overall sustainability of printed material. This includes the sourcing and environmental impact of the ingredients or raw materials used to formulate the printing inks, the ability to remove inks from printed materials and packaging for recycling which is known as de-inkability, and the impact of those raw materials on food safety and last but not the least the way ingredients like solvents may have impacted the production work environment.

Solvent-based printing ink hazards

Aromatic hydrocarbon solvent based printing inks pose several environmental hazards as releasing a large amount of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) to the atmosphere. Additionally, the reducers used in printing inks are hard to recover. In view of safeguarding the environment, the regulations on the printing industries in the recent times has prompted the printing processes to resort to aromatic hydrocarbon free printing inks.

“Presently, the single sustainable printing ink technology that will act as a universal solution for all the environmental concerns is not available. However, Yansefu has been making continuous efforts to provide easily biodegradable printing ink technologies by using renewable raw materials cellulose derivatives such as Nitrocellulose, CAP, CAB etc. and providing mono-solvent reducing system that can be distilled or recovered easily and reused in the printing site and/or ink manufacturing industries. Additionally, Yansefu conducts selection of raw materials as per the national and international food safety and packaging regulatory requirements, for instance IS 15495, FDA CFR, EuPIA Exclusion Policy, Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive, Restrictions on Hazardous Substances Directive (RoHS) and others,” says Mohapatra.

Water-based inks by Yansefu India

JK Sharma, CEO, Yansefu India, says, “Our water-based ink series has set a benchmark in the industry. Yansefu is providing water-based printing solutions for surface applications on various paper substrates such as chromoart, glassine, kraft, brown, metallized and foil paper, that itself a biodegradable substrate. Some of our well known water-based ink series available for both gravure and CI flexographic applications are Sarjoflex, Sarjoaqua, Sarjocor, and Sarjocor Plus. We have also been working to develop water-based ink system for other flexible substrates.”

“However, it is noteworthy to mention that an ink could be biodegradable, but to meet retailers’ expectations, regulatory requirements and consumers’ demands, the whole converted packaging needs to share the attribute. For instance, a bio renewable inks gets printed on non-compostable substrate and laminated using non-biodegradable adhesive system. In this case, the final packaging cannot be considered as sustainable. We are currently working towards development of biodegradable adhesives as well as strengthening our solvent-free adhesive grades,” adds Satyasheel Shetty, vice president, R&D – adhesives at Yansefu India.

Conclusion

“Sustainability is just not a terminology but a prevailing challenge which will definitely carve a new shape of the printing and packaging sector in future. Supply chain (Printing inks, substrates, adhesives, additives, raw materials) manufacturers are not just expressing tremendous interest towards sustainability but also making efforts to attain it. To bring the sustainability drive, all the supply chain members needs to work cooperatively,” concludes Mohapatra.