Green Printing and Plastic: No Longer Strange Bedfellows

However, it is the very durability and longevity of traditional plastic—many of which also contain chemical color-ants and performance enhancers—that print consumers find increasingly troublesome. In addition to requiring it to perform to specification, they also expect plastic to be easily disposable, to leave no lasting environmental footprint, produce no harmful emissions during processing, and to minimize the use of non-renewable resources like petroleum and fossil fuels in its manufacture and processing. In short, while we praise plastic for presenting opportunities for innovation, we also recognize it as an “unnatural resource” with lingering negative environmental effects.