Eco-design
manifesto
1. Design to satisfy real needs as opposed to transient, fashionable or market-driven needs.
2. Design to minimise the ecological footprint of the product/material/service product, i.e. reduce resource consumption, including energy and water.
3. Design to harness solar income (sun, wind, water or sea power) rather than use non renewable nature capital such as fossil fuels.
4. Design to enable the separation of components of the product/material or service product at the end of life in order to encourage recycling or reuse of materials and/or components.
5. Design to exclude the use of substances toxic or hazardous to human and other forms of life at all stages of the product/material/service product's lifecycle.
6. Design to engender maximum benefits to the intended audience and to educate the client and the user and thereby create a more equable future.
7. Design to use locally available materials and resources wherever possible (thinking globally but acting locally).
8. Design to exclude innovation lethargy by re-examining original assumptions behind existing concepts and products/materials/service products.
9. Design to dematerialise products into services wherever feasible.
10. Design to maximise a product/material/service product's benefits to communities.
11. Design to encourage modularity in design to permit sequential purchases, as needs require and funds permit, to facilitate repair/reuse and to improve functionality.
12. Design to foster debate and challenge the status quo surrounding existing products/materials/ service products.
13. Publish eco-pluralistic designs in the public domain for everyone's benefit, especially those designs that commerce will not manufacture.
14. Design to create more sustainable products/materials/service products for a more sustainable future.
'The Eco-Design Handbook' - Alistair Faud-Luke
Our next task was to pick one discipline of sustainable design and apple eco-design manifesto onto it. I choose
Vegetable ink printing
Soy and vegetable based inks are widely recognized as the environmentally friendly choice. But an ink's ingredients are only part of the story when measuring its environmental impact.
Conventional printing inks are petroleum-based and used with alcohol-based solvents which, as they evaporate, emit Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) into the atmosphere. VOCs cause environmental pollution and are a health hazard to pressroom workers as well as creating ozone pollution. Petroleum-based inks emit between 25% and 40% VOCs as they dry, whereas vegetable-based ink emissions rates can be as low as 4%.
Petroleum-based inks contain products refined from crude oil and the energy required for extraction, refining and treatment for this is high which adds to the environmental damage. Crude oil is also a fossil fuel , resources of which are dwindling very fast. Vegetable oil based inks, on the other hand, are derived from renewable resources.
Vegetable based inks also have the added benefit of being easier to remove from recycled paper and print during the de-inking process of recycling.
http://hhreedsprinters.co.uk/vegetable-based-inks
Soy is popular because it is a very stable material that exhibits excellent "wetting" properties which enhance its ability to carry solid pigments. Most manufacturers of soy and vegetable based inks today actually "blend" ingredients, much in the way a winemaker will blend grapes, in order to take advantage of the unique characteristics of each oil.
http://www.greenerprinter.com/grp/jsp/inks.jsp
“One of the wonderful side effects of (switching to vegetable inks) is that (our shop) doesn’t smell like a print shop anymore,we have reduced our VOC’s 22 percent and HAP’s (hazardous air pollutants) by 93 percent by switching from petroleum-based ink to soy and vegetable ink.”
Dee Bisel, owner of Minuteman Press in Overland Park, KS
Three main concerns while printing :
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VOCs (volatile organic compounds) -emitted as the ink dries.
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Heavy metals
these are contained in certain pigments (particularly metallic colours) and can result in environmental and worker health hazards. -
Non-renewable resources - the oil content in non-vegetable oil inks is petroleum-based.
Vegetable oil inks have much lower rates of VOCs emissions than mineral oil inks. Also, in contrast to mineral oils, vegetable oils are derived from renewable resources, and the inks made from them are more easily removed from waste paper during de-inking. Another plus is that the pigments in the vegetable oil inks do not usually contain heavy metals.
How does soy/ vegetable ink fit into eco-design manifesto?
Soy bean is often called as 'miracle bean' thanks to its various uses - people are using it as animal feed, biodiesel fuel and also as ink for a printing industry.
In 50's and 60's, it was very common to use vegetable-based inks for printing. In 70's there was the "oil boom" and people started to use petroleum based ink. They found out that petroleum based inks dry much quicker. However, later on, they realised its impact on the environment and they got back to vegetable based inks. Today over 95% of all newspapers are using vegetable based oil (USA - 75% in Japan - 2010).
PROS OF USING VEGETABLE BASED INKS:
+ better gloss
+ more ink per pound (up to 15% more than petroleum based ink)
+ better rub resistance - it won't smudge
+ easily removed from waste paper during de-inking process
+ vibrant colors
+same price as petroleum baased ink
However, vegetable based ink contains 10-15% of pigment ( to make it colorful) and 85-90% is vegetable based oil.
Recycled vegetable oils are considered a more viable, sustainable raw material for ink production than 100% soy-oil based inks and are derived from recyclable soy oil, rice bran oil, linseed oil, paulownia wood oil, coconut oil and palm tree oil.
satisfy real needs - people will always use book or papers to get information, news or just to annouce something so I believe vegetable based ink does satisfy real needs
minimise the ecological footprint - vegetable based ink's emmission can be low as 4% compared to 25% from petroleum based ink.
Many printers blends various vegetable oils to get the fienst texture so in the ink there is a mix of vegetable oils such as soy bean, rice bran oil, linseed oil, coconut oil, palm tree oil ect ...
Even the way the plants used to make eco ink are grown is helpful to the planet, as they help reduce air pollution by minimising toxic emissions. And because they have such low toxic compounds, they’re safer for the soil and groundwater, too.
Soybean oil is naturally clearer than some petroleum distillates, making it easier to obtain brightly colored ink. Since the oil is clearer, less pigment is necessary to produce the same effect, which reduces the overall cost of the ink
If it's 100% soy bean in than it is NOeventhough soy bean (which are one of the most popular base) has many uses, the expansion of soybean plantations into forests is also contributing to climate change. Deforestation is responsible for about 15% of all the global greenhouse gas emissions caused by people.
"Between the years 2000 and 2005, Brazil lost more than 50,000 square miles of rainforest—a large portion of that for soybean farming."
http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/agriculture/soy/impacts/
"In the U.S. alone, over 80 million acres of land are covered in soybeans. That’s hundreds of thousands of acres of deforestation, habitat destruction, over-cultivation and destruction of soils, and billions of tons of toxic chemicals spewed into the environment year after year, contaminating our soils, water, and destroying wildlife and human health."
http://www.smallfootprintfamily.com/why-soy-is-bad-for-you-and-the-planet
"The global production of soybean more than doubled in the period 1995-2011 to a new record volume of 263.8 million tonnes (2010/11). The major world soybean producers in 2010/11 were the United States of America (90.6 million tonnes), Brazil (73.8 million tonnes) and Argentina (49.5 million tonnes). "
enable the separation of components - vegetable based inks are easily removed from waste paper during de-inking process - this leads us to another point from eco-design manifesto:
encourage modularity
exclude the use of substances toxic or hazardous - in order to pertoleum based ink, most pigments in vegetable ink do not contain heavy metals and the emission from its production is much lower than petroleum based inks. "Solvents are not required for cleaning after using vegetable based ink, as the press can be cleaned with a water based cleaner, reducing VOCs further. "
"Volatile organic compounds leads to formation of smog in printing units, which pose serious health hazards to workers. The volatile organic compound also affects the ozone layer. "
Santinath Ghosh from the department of Chemical Technology at the Calcutta University
"The problem with petroleum based ink is that the petrol and alcohol content evaporates in the drying process, releasing up to 30% VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) into the atmosphere. Solvents are also required to clean the press after use – and solvents are another source of VOCs. Petroleum based ink is also harder to de-ink when being recycled, which results in toxic waste."
http://www.printtogether.com.au/environment/vegetable-based-inks
use locally available materials and resources wherever possible -I would say that this point is quite neutral. Obviously for soy-based ink or for rice-based ink you need certain weather condition to produce the plant so therefore it is not suitable for every place on Earth to produce it. However you can get oil from suflowers which are quite popular in Europe or beetroot and these are just example of locally avaiable materials that don't need to be imported from abroad. However I think that the idea of using vegetable oil as a part of ink for printing is definitely more eco-friendly than using petroleum base which is definitely barely local material and needs to be imported.
maximise a product/ material/ service product's benefits to the communities - it offer not just enviroment-friendly way of printing, but also you can actually made more ink per pound ( up to 15%) than you can make from petroleum and therefore you can print more.
more sustainable products/ materials/ service for more sustainable future - as vegetable based ink are made from renewable resources, we are able to recycle them and re-used, it is a great way for more sustainable future. There are also ways how to reduce paper consumption ( using sugar cane instead of trees/rice ect...) and therefore print industry can become very sustainable industry -
Vegetable based inks are no more expensive than petroleum based inks.
WORDS IN USE
BEAF hope that Eden’s Paper will help reduce landfill paper waste by encouraging people to plant their wrapping paper to grow something useful, instead of just throwing it away. According to BEAF, us wrapping-crazy Brits rack up a whopping 227,000 miles of wasted wrapping paper after a typical Christmas gift binge. That’s enough paper to wrap the world nine times.
