The offset printing industry emits 500,000 tons of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) annually into the atmosphere. These emissions are huge contributors to global warming and are also detrimental to the health of millions of workers in the global print industry. The major source of pollution is the petroleum components in such inks which are released in the atmosphere as harmful emissions during the drying and the washing processes of printing, causing photochemical smog forma­tion and ozone depletion. Printers who are exposed to regular emissions are in danger of acquiring respiratory ail­ments such as tuberculosis and even cancer. The current ecofriendly solutions available in the global market are either expensive or do not produce the same quality output as the widely-available petroleum based inks.

Krishna Gopal Singh, chief tech­nology officer of Ennatura Technol­ogy Ventures, Delhi, has formulated a biodegradable printing ink which is mainly composed of the resin, the sol­vent which is used to dissolve the resin, the color pigment, and additives. Singh and his team created a functional resin from renewable feedstock so that all the chemical reactions involved in the print­ing process don't result in emission of volatile organic compounds. This partic­ular kind of resin is pH-sensitive and the inks formulated with it print well with mildly acidic fountain solutions used in lithography printing.

The Ennatura inks contain non-edi­ble vegetable oil as the drying oil, thus removing VOCs from ink formulation itself. This typical characteristic of the ink changes the way it dries after printing, causing no emissions during the process. Since the resin is pH-sensitive, it can be washed off by a mildly alkaline aqueous wash solution, thus eliminating the need of using hydrocarbon based wash solu­tions like kerosene. Thus, the composi­tion of the ink renders the whole printing ecosystem to produce no harmful emis­sions. Since a simple alkali solution can be used to wash off the inks effectively, the washing costs could be brought down by 85 to 90 percent, reducing the overall cost considerably. Singh is presently working on a bench scale production.