Paul Stephenson is not normally a man to pipe up about green issues, but here he takes a break from his recycling to talk about eco-friendly inks
I’m a bloke, and as such when it comes to taking out the recycling I’m unable to make several sensible journeys. Firstly I collect all the tins and cereal boxes, and build an eight-foot structure that resembles the Manhattan skyline. Then, after some preparatory blowing I attempt what I believe in weightlifting circles is called the clean and jerk. Propelling myself at speed and
fuelled by foul language I then career towards the bins. There can be only one outcome, and within seconds I’m wearing a pair of cornflake box slip-ons and fully drizzled in tuna oil. Marvellous — another day smelling like I’ve spent the night in Captain Birdseye’s bunk. And so it’ll come as no surprise to you to hear that although well intentioned, I’m not the world’s most successful eco warrior. To such an extent that I swore that the only article on green issues I would ever write would be the boys book of bogey flicking… and yet here I am, about to join Gordon Ramsay in discussing carbon footprints, (although unlike Rammers, I don’t have a restaurant at Heathrow).
Nowadays you’re supposed to know all about your biodegradables, your biomass and bio fuels: the carbon offset, the carbon tax, and as for carbon trading well that’s all pretty damn straightforward. Then all we need to do is have a quick look at our micro generation and our sustainable development, and it’s home in time for a bag of mung beans and a glass of goat wee. I’ve got energy saving light bulbs dangling from the ceiling like sci-fi haemorrhoids; I’ve sold the guzzler and travel to work by donkey: and all my printers are in a home made bum sling, piped up to a methane converter that runs two autos and a dryer… my work is done… well, not quite, and there’s a reason — I’m still trying to get my head around the idea of eco friendly inks, and before I go on, I ain’t no chemist but…..
You’ve purchased your planet saving T-shirt — a subject I shall leave to the learned Professor Charles of the Continental University — and then you arrive at your printer full of good intentions: You want water-based ink. And why wouldn’t you, anything with water in the title has got to be good right? In some ways yes, but has a printer ever told you that to cure water based inks we run our dryers at less than half the speed, I guess using double the gas? Does that mean our carbon footprint has increased? I presume it does.
And while we’re in our cloud of noxious waterbased vapour at the Joker’s lair, I’d better confess that no matter how good we think we are, when we use water-based inks we spend more time colour matching, have more screens break down and generally faff about like grannies in a factory outlet. It can take us up to twice as long to run a job… and so we use more gas… and the sun sets over another melting igloo.
And when we’re not sloshing about in the water-based we’re whipping up a discharge cocktail for all your lovely dark garments. It really is brilliant stuff — when you print it you can’t see anything and then at temperature in the dryer, abracadabra, the reactive dye is removed leaving a bright and texture free print… rub it on your face and go mmmmmmm — after you’ve waited a few minutes for the formaldehyde to evaporate of course. Ah good old formaldehyde, fairly harmless and great for embalming bodies, but it’s a skin irritant so printers beware.
And when our ink maestros have finished with the above, they pour the waste inks into airtight containers and rocket them into outer space where they can do no harm. Under no circumstances are water-based inks washed onto the water table — if you had a blue cup of tea this morning, don’t blame your local T-shirt printer
