If you are serious about improving the sustainability of your business then you should quite rightly be looking at how your signage is produced. Retail signs contain a significant amount of materials and ensuring these can be recycled or will safely biodegrade when sent to landfill will help the sustainability of an organisation. Which leads us to a question; how green is the signage ink being used in your signs?
Inks are a very important item when it comes to sustainability in signage. Historically, they were solvent-based and contained a heady mix of chemicals in order to bound to the substrate and exude the bright, eye-catching colours being demanded.
Now however there are alternatives to the long-used toxic inks once favoured. These can be either cured by used of ultra-violet (UV) light, or are water based. In both cases they present a far less threat to the environment. They give off far less harmful emissions when used and can break down quickly when disposed. The availability of these inks has increased somewhat over the years as pressure has grown on printers to reduce the dangerous inks they once used.
The downside of UV and water-based inks used to be their durability. External signage takes a battering from 4 seasons of differing temperatures, harsh sunlight, rain and ice. This was previously a main reason why solvent-based inks remained popular. Put simply, they lasted longer. But this is no longer the case. Continued development has seen UV and water-based inks perform easily on a par with their toxic counterparts. So the idea that solvent-based inks should be the default choice for external signage is no longer the case. You can now have signs which use a more environmentally friendly substrate than PVC and include inks which are not the danger to the environment they once were.
At Blaze we are committed to introducing new ideas in signage which help improve your sustainability. So if you want to know how green is signage ink and the ways it could benefit your signs, come and talk to us about how we can develop your visual branding using materials and processes which support your drive to reduce your environmental impact.
