digitaldots.info The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner It may sound like a joke, but a group of British university students has recently completed a research project using this as a starting point. The University of Leicester students wanted to know how much of the Amazon rainforest it would take to print out the internet. There … Read more
The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner According to the US Energy Information Administration the country’s energy related CO2 emissions are rising. So much for all that green-speak; more a bath than a wash. But it might not be as bad as it seems because increases of 2% to 3% are actually small relative to … Read more
The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner There’s been much attention of late on the use of mercury arc lamps for curing applications in the printing industry. This technology is widely used however it has some serious drawbacks, not least the fact that it uses an awful lot of energy even when not actually curing … Read more
The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner To many people the 45th anniversary of Earth Day on the 22nd April was just another Wednesday. But the particular Wednesday was rather more momentous than your average day. In honour of the occasion, some one billion people around the world have been getting involved in raising awareness … Read more
The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner Within our ISO working group we are looking at a document Fogra has drafted to provide guidance for quantifying how much energy a digital printing device consumes. You would think that this is pretty straightforward, but it’s not just a matter of counting how many units of electricity … Read more
The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner For many years the graphics industry has been doing its bit to minimise carbon footprints, mostly because cutting waste saves money and time. But whatever the motivation, together with other industries we may be helping to make a difference. The International Energy Agency (IEA) reckons that global efforts … Read more
The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner An Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) is a quantification of something’s environmental impact. EPDs can be created for anything from home furnishings to newspapers. They provide all sorts of environmental data, from raw material impact through to emissions to water and waste generation. They are wonderful tools, but they … Read more
The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner Environmental management is something all businesses should bother with, but it’s such a wooly term. In a way it has to be vague because it means running your business to have the least negative environmental impact possible, and how do you define that? If you’re in the mining … Read more
The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner The idea of using rubbish to create energy goes back to the first bonfire, but only a handful of companies in the graphic arts industries seem to be paying much heed to using biomass. Toppan Printing has developed a laminated packaging material that contains around 10% of biomass … Read more
The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner The 13th April is an important deadline. It’s the day when a key exemption in the European Union (EU)’s Regulation on Hazardous Substance II (RoHS II) no longer applies. The ramifications for the graphic arts industry worldwide could be serious, eventually. RoHS II “lays down rules on the … Read more