Did you receive 'greeting card' digital image files sent through social applications such as WhatsApp recently? Our surveys suggest that even though this is much more convenient, people prefer to receive their greeting cards physically. There are many reasons for this.
One of it is the green revolution that has left many people shunning non-eco-friendly products. With extensive research, we have found that digital printing gives us the best of both worlds. By choosing Art in Card printing, you will not only get wedding stationery physically, but you will also be helping the environment by choosing an eco-friendly solution.
Going digital with your wedding invitation card and wedding stationery has always been the better option, but this new generation of digital printing has advantages that boggle the mind. Compared to what was available less than 15 years ago, the eco-friendly nature and efficiency of Art in Card printing will be magical.
Digital printing has come a long way since it was first developed. Many years ago, the quality of litho printing a.k.a. offset pinting cannot be compared with digital printing as digital printing was not at all competitive since it wasn't really good. This fact made a lot people adopt the litho printing method since the environmental advantages did not offset the quality and price. But as the saying goes, progress waits for no one, and digital printing has since gotten more efficient, sleeker, quicker, and better. Now, digital prints surpass litho printing and its likes in all respects.
We've been talking on the ecological advantages of digital printing all day, but what are these advantages?
Art in Card Printing Yields Little Waste
It seems a somewhat pointless statistic, but even percentages as low as 5 to 10% run-up into something much higher when dealing with large scale printing jobs. While you will still have to deal with paper materials while using digital printing, you will have a lot less wastage. Waste for flexographic printers often runs higher than 15%, which means that if you want to buy wedding invitation cards, 15 out of 100 cards will have to be scrapped.
Because digital printing uses electronic charges instead of ink and requires no setup, waste papers do not exceed 5%. Some digital printers will also recycle scrap paper for other uses to cut down scrap cards even more. With each new digital printer generation cutting down costs and driving up efficiencies, you may soon be saving more than 10% in scrapped print. What this means is that little greenhouse gases like CO2 and other pollutants are produced every year.
At Art in Card, our have both EPEAT® Gold and ENERGY STAR® certification. We also use eco-friendly printers like Ricoh Pro C5200s to lower the production costs and environmental impact of our printing approach. The programmable smart on/off function, low melting point chemical toners, easy access panels, and single-pass duplex scanning all reduce our overall energy consumption.
Another energy and efficiency benefit is that digitally printed sheets do not need air drying or UV curing since they come out already dried.
Another notable benefit is the time it takes a digital printer to print. Compared to the 15-30 minutes litho printing time, a digital printer will have your print-ready for you in less than a minute. This not only saves you the time you could have spent on more productive things but also saves you energy by not having to draw power for long spells.
Art in Card Is Completely Electronical
Say you want to buy wedding stationaries, with the old techniques, you will have to wait days for the setup, come back to confirm it's the way you want, and then wait some more for the final product — all these stress for a few copies of your print. With what programmers are cooking up nowadays, you don't even have to see anybody to get your final prints physically.
Adobe and other PDF applications allow you to get a good look at what your final product will be before any printing is even done. Most of what Art in Card will do for you can be done entirely paperless and with little to no physical movement on your part.
The only time you may need to confirm some things physically is unique finish and materials, as well as spot colour printings that don’t translate well over PDF files. The great thing is, with digital printing, you can quickly get one copy of your work in print for confirmation with no waste of time.
Art in Card Prints Has Little Toxic Chemicals
When you are dealing with flexographic and offset printing, there are a lot of toxic chemicals that go into your final print. To produce the plates, which are themselves made of polyester or rubber, you need certain darkroom chemicals that are more often than not, toxic. There are also other necessary evils like solvents that will dissolve the leftover ink on the rollers that are needed.
Although some chemicals are also involved in digital printing like removing leftover inks, these chemicals are used in much smaller measures than with older machines. The ink used with digital printing is also still an oil-based chemical.
With the new generation grown toners that are polymerized from inert chemicals, printing has since moved away from the old style of pulverizing and grinding toners. This method produces toners that can dry in print at much lower temperatures and forms its particulates in tiny uniforms for smoother prints. At Art in Card, our Ricoh toners consume 40 to 50% less toner and use 25 to 35% less energy per 450g of toner during printing.
To round off, we can conclude that digital printing has dramatically reduced the chemical and physical environmental impacts of waste in print. It is, thus, not bragging to say conclusively that digital printing has since surpassed traditional methods in all areas.
Yay or Nay?
Art in Card makes high-quality, cost-effective and reliable printouts in the fastest time and with the lowest necessary physical requirement. If environmental safety is essential to you, it is just another reason to support us for an eco-friendly solution to all your printing needs.