recycled paper and environmentally friendly soy ink

[pchavez923]

Okay, again, sorry if this is a repeat question, but I'm working on a poster that needs to get printed in the next couple weeks and freaking out a little bit. the band's management is saying the poster will only get approved as long as I used recycled paper and environmentally friendly soy inks. I had been planning on using Dur-o-tone steel gray french paper and speedball ink... now i have no idea what to use. Any recommendations???????

[vrooooom]

You can use soy ink, but who the hell knows if it's environmentally friendly or not. As far as the french paper goes, it usually contains recycled content from what I understand. But there are about 1,000,001 different shades of recycled. And greenwashing.

Good luck.

[pchavez923]

Yeah, i read their page about being environmentally friendly here: Run of the Mill Club at French Paper - America's family-run paper mill so I guess I'm good on the paper. But the extent of any info on soy based inks I found was andy mac's response in a previous thread:

"I met a guy from a commune in Humbolt county where they did a lot of knock-off Dead and Phish merch under strict Microbionic diet regulations. He said if you mash up tofu it goes all thixotrophic and turns to a natural screen ink and can be coloured with the following:

process yellow - dandelions and urine

process cyan - blueberries and yak butter

process magenta - grape jelly mixed with welch's grape juice

process black - charcoal brickettes and pipe tar cut with perrier

Print it through 16xx handstretched silk for optimum results.


110% organic and colorfast forever, as long as you didn't wash it."



Hoping for more help here.

[vrooooom]

Lol, that Andy!

The idea on using Soy Ink comes from industries that rely on oil-based inks to stay open on the press... offset, letterpress, etc. But, according to many on the forums at briarpress.org, the oil replaced by soy oil is usually linseed oil. The real "villian" in printing ink is the pigment. But everyone on here qualifies as a small time producer, because we're not printing a sunday paper using 500+ lbs. of ink. People are throwing away more waste in their garbage can every day than the average printer disposes of.

This is the only one I know of: One Stroke Inks - Screen Printing Inks & Supplies

But I don't know of one formulated for paper.

[Andymac]

the soy requirement is coming out of the someone told someone told someone after the bonghit club.

Soy inks are found in the offset printing industry. Tell them if they want to print the posters offset, then they need another printer who is NOT A SCREENPRINTER and will cost thousands more than you. Tell them screenprinting, with waterbase inks is about as green as they can get. -By Hand, no VOC's, natural pigments, no petroleum based cleaners.
Then if there is brown in the design, shit in the can so it smells green.

[squeegeethree]

As Andy said there are no soy inks for screenprinting. Further more soy inks will be banned in a decade's time when the damage from all the estrogen in soy inks confirmed.

[crosshair]

Don't know about inks, and I suspect you are out of luck...beware myths and "I heard somewhere..." tales floating around about "soy inks" and various other purportedly environmentally friendly products and buzzwords.
When a band says they will only approve a poster printed with "environmentally friendly soy inks," I 100% guarantee you they have no clue what they are talking about. Most likely the last printer they dealt with blew some smoke up their ass about how they used "soy inks" and just used the same shit everyone else does.
That's what Andymac's snark is about. Pay close attention to what Andy says even or especially when it's facetious...becuz he knows his shit.

Franmar does make a line of screenprinting products (emulsion remover, dehaze, screenwash for solvent inks, etc) that are soy derived and (maybe, partially, somewhat...) biodegradable, basically biodiesel-type products. So that's something.

[crosshair]

Oh look what Andy and Luther wrote as I typed that.

[pchavez923]

Yeah, I figured he was joking, but when I read it, I choked on my coffee from laughing at the yak butter. I felt that deemed it worthy to repost again. This is all good info and I've told them that they're gonna have to go with an offset printer if they want soy based inks. It's not like I'd be printing thousands here... we're talking a run of 50 tops. They need to understand that. Plus I'm Mexican, so if anything, not only will they be helping the environment, but they be helping out a little impoverished brown girl make her printing dreams come true or some shit.

[strawberryluna]

Plus I'm Mexican, so if anything, not only will they be helping the environment, but they be helping out a little impoverished brown girl make her printing dreams come true or some shit.

fucking GOLD. so awesome.

good luck!