Gravure Green Printing Standard Enters Public Consultation, with VOC Reduction as a Core Metric

Over recent years, green printing has continued to gain a larger share of China’s printing sector. To guide the industry toward more standardized development, work on relevant printing standards has been accelerating. The gravure green printing standard has now reached the public consultation stage.

The green printing standard framework was initially split into three parts: gravure printing, lithographic printing and bill printing. Whether the scope will be expanded later will depend on the implementation and promotion results of these three standards. Green printing standards for lithographic printing and bill printing have already been issued and have drawn positive responses from printing companies. The gravure green printing standard has been submitted to the Ministry of Environmental Protection and is now in the public comment phase. Below are the key points of that standard.

The standard applies to gravure-printed products made from paper, plastic and their composites, as well as their printing production processes. It mainly covers:

(1) Control indicators and requirements built around the environmental characteristics of gravure product production (printing);

(2) Pollutant emissions from gravure printing enterprises must meet national or local discharge standards and requirements;

(3) Environmental issues in gravure prepress;

(4) Organic solvents in gravure printing and post-press;

(5) Resource conservation in gravure printing;

(6) Active adoption of advanced technologies and production processes that support resource conservation and comprehensive utilization as well as pollution prevention and emission reduction;

(7) The printing process uses organic solvent drying and recovery equipment, or should be equipped with solvent drying emission treatment equipment;

(8) The use of water-based inks is encouraged;

(9) Coextrusion and solvent-free lamination processes are used to reduce VOC generation;

(10) Recovery of organic solvents and materials containing organic solvents is strengthened and institutionalized.

The gravure green printing standard gives special prominence to reducing VOC emissions, with VOC-related requirements accounting for 24 points in the scoring criteria. It also clearly states that independent solvent recovery devices must be installed at key workstations where solvent volatilization occurs. The recovered solvents can then be reused in different ways, such as heat energy recovery and solvent reuse.

On VOC emissions, regions have introduced relevant standards one after another. In November 2010, Guangdong Province issued the Emission Standard of Volatile Organic Compounds for the Packaging and Printing Industry of Guangdong Province. In September 2013, Beijing’s Breakdown of Key Tasks of the 2013–2017 Clean Air Action Plan of Beijing stipulated that atmospheric pollutant emission standards for the packaging and printing industry would be formulated in 2014, along with VOC limit standards for products.

Source: China Packaging Network (pack.cn); original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-361815.html