"In this age of digital technology, printing presses still play a major role in our daily lives in the production of a range of materials such as booklets, posters, postcards, brochures, calendars, stationeries etc. While this wide-spread process of printing gives us such informative and eye pleasing products, the resultant environment pollution caused due to these goes unnoticed. Saving the environment is a responsibility that is vested on for all of us and thus the need of the hour is to print green.



Well, printing green refers to the process that reduces wastes, encourages recycling and implements other measures that leads to an eco friendly printing operation. Such printing presses carry on their processes in a way that causes minimal harm to the environment. The primary concern for a green printing press is to manage wastes effectively. The objective is to have less waste being generated as that would mean fewer measures to be adopted to eliminate such wastes. And the Waste management starts from the prepress process itself. Furthermore the wastes are segregated into categories such as hazardous and non hazardous wastes. The discharge of hazardous wastes is carried out in an eco friendly manner. Waste management in green printing houses are two fold i.e. either they implement measures to reduce wastes or else recycle them.

Our environment is being spoiled so, Environment conservation is a priority for all of us. We have now realized the urgency of keeping the environment free from harmful emissions and chemical interactions. Anything that disturbs the ecological balance and pollutes the environment is hazardous and should be avoided or at least minimized to a great extent. The production and usage of various commodities should comply with eco friendly standards. This has given rise to the term ""environment friendly"" that essentially refers to the processes, products and services that cause minimum harm to the environment.

Printing is one such process that produces harmful wastes leading to environmental pollution. The use of petroleum inks, varnishes, laminates and adhesives leads to the production of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The release of VOCs in the atmosphere has adverse environmental effects. This not only pollutes the air but also leads to respiratory ailments. Therefore it should be compulsory for all the publishing houses to print green.

To save the environment, publishing houses should print green i.e. the printing process/ technology should be eco-friendly.

The printing industry uses the natural resources in a major way. To control this heavy use of natural resources and save the environment, a new kind of printing process have made way into the printing industry. They are called green printers. Such printing houses use environment friendly processes and rely on recycled paper rather than non-recycled ones. Use of recycled paper does a lot of good to the environment by saving trees that would otherwise be cut to produce paper. Apart from this, recycled papers lead to energy saving and reduced release of air pollutants. Green printing houses source the paper from well managed forests that comply with strict environmental standards.

Thus the concept of green printing would surely help in the process of degradation of our environment. Therefore, go green, print green and save the grace of our environment!!"