Why is Waterless Offset environmentally superior to conventional lithography?
The first reason is water. As you know the water supply is finite. There is no more fresh water on the planet than there was 2000 years ago. In those days the population was only 3% of its present size. It is estimated that a medium sized printer with three presses could use up to 120,000 litres of water every year. In the UK there are in excess of 12,000 printing companies. That is a lot of water. Waterless Offset also reduces VOC (Volatile Organic Compound) emissions by 98%. The remaining 2% being the VOCs used in cleaning fluids and inks. The VOC content of inks can also be reduced by the use of vegetable oil based inks instead of mineral based ink. The average printer emits 20 tonnes of VOCs every year! • OK, but why do VOCs matter and how do they harm the environment? The major environmental impact of VOCs lies in their involvement in the formation of ground level ozone. Ozone is not emitted directly into the air, instead it is created when oxides of nitrogen, produced when fossil
