Not until a few years ago, consumers started demanding soy-based inks for environmental concern. It’s a welcomed change not only for the obvious use of petroleum, but also because of less volatile organic compounds (VOCs) seeping into the air. This makes breathing a whole lot easier for everyone near a printing press and better overall quality of air for all of us.

Soy ink was developed in the 1970’s in a response to the oil crisis. Since then, the newest of these ink technologies is what Independent Printing uses, vegetable based inks.

“What’s the difference, isn’t soybean a vegetable?”

Soy-based inks are made with soybean oil, and vegetable-based inks are made with vegetable oil. Vegetable-based ink encapsulates the soy realm but it also includes other organic matter rather than simply soybeans.

Vegetable-based inks are recognized as better because it’s not restricted to one crop, plus the process takes the best qualities of various different plant matter in the use of the ink. Furthermore, it doesn’t compete with the thriving market for biodiesel fuel (soybean oil goes into the making of this fuel).

Vegetable-based inks – taking the best of both worlds

Our vegetable based ink system consists of 51% sustainable materials including vegetable oils and modified rosins. These inks are also formulated with organic materials that do not contain any animal-based byproducts. The overall volatile organic compounds (VOCs) for these inks are are less than 1%. Many soy-based inks do not have this low of VOC emission.

Flashcure is a Hybrid UV-cured ink. It contains no vegetable oils and is dried (cured) with UV energy. UV inks do not contain any volatile organic compounds (VOC) making them a very green choice.

Both the vegetable-based inks and Flashcure are environmentally responsible ink systems. Therefore, Independent can use whichever ink best suits the project.