Every Monday morning, I leave my weekly stockpile of used
jars or empty bottles in the council-supplied green plastic tub outside for
collection. And every Monday evening, I come home to find it half full of those
same jars and bottles.
So every Tuesday, I double-check whether I’ve got the
collection day wrong, again.
Nope. Monday it is.
So I then do what any other reasonable person would do –
rehearse a long and morally superior phone call to my council to ask,
pompously, how they expect Londoners to recycle more when they won’t even pick
up my collection.
On one occasion, I actually made the call. And I quickly
tumbled down the moral high ground when it turned out that they jars and
bottles just weren’t clean enough to enter the waste stream.
Whoops.
Which brings me, circuitously, to paper recycling. If
printing is basically about putting ink on paper, then paper recycling is all
about cleaning it up and getting ink off paper. 'De-inking' is a tried and tested craft,
relying on processes refined over decades. And it was flung firmly into
the spotlight at Drupa.
At the show, I met up with Axel Fischer, public relations
officer for INGEDE, the International Association of the Deinking Industry. He
came armed with a stack of information, test results and not an insignificant
amount of passion about the dangers inkjet poses to the de-inking process.
The story goes that paper recycling plants are geared toward conventional
offset and gravure inks. Dry toner fits happily into the same
system (in fact, some leading toner manufacturers’ print is said to have the
best performance). But inkjet - that young upstart of a technology that so
impressed pundits with a host of new applications and breakthroughs that the
fair was widely crowned the ‘Inkjet Drupa’ – seems rebellious by its very
nature.
According to Fischer, inkjet inks are too hydrophilic
(‘water-loving’, if you will) and can’t be properly removed during recycling,
thus muddying the paper. He was even more unforgiving about UV-cured inks and,
in particular, HP’s Electro Ink, which, he claimed, break into big particles
that end up peppering the final substrate with ‘dirt specks’.
Perhaps this wasn’t such an issue in inkjet’s infancy, when the quantities were low. But
with Drupa exhibitors flying the flag for high-volume inkjetted newspapers and
direct mail, the debate is only going to grow.
The line in the sand (or
perhaps dry toner powder) has been drawn. Vendors and digital soothsayers are
proselytising the dizzying possibilities offered by the technology. On the other side, recycled paper apostles are printing ‘The End is Nigh’ on their sandwich
boards (with offset inks, I imagine) in preparation for the de-inking
apocalypse.
But redemption is at hand. Or at least, it could be in the
future. Solutions theorised range from the scientific, such as using biological enzymes
and micro-organisms to dislodge those pesky particles, to the deterrent, such
as branding inkjet printed products with a “Cannot be recycled” warning akin to
cigarette packaging. The former would require significant restructuring to
paper’s waste stream, while the second would surely sound a sustainability
death-knell for inkjet, but they both show that answers are being sought. Print, long lambasted as a
‘dirty industry’, has again and again proved itself capable of evolving to meet
environmental imperatives and market demands.
Going back to household recycling, come next Monday evening,
my best-case scenario would be an emptied green tub sans jars or bottles (regardless
of how well I scrubbed out that empty half pint of semi-skimmed). But it’s
doubtful my local reprocessing plant is going to re-tool its cleaning
department any time soon, thus throwing the onus back on me.
For inkjet recycling, the ideal outcome is undoubtedly
different for the various stakeholders. Deciding whose solutionis best requires discussion and debate, and, thankfully, the inkjet de-inking
issue is now firmly on the agenda.