Waterless printing

The vast use of technology has created a lot of problems for us and the biggest of them is the threat to our environment. Now we are trying to revive with the implementation of environment friendly technologies in various fields and applications. Waterless printing is such an environment friendly technology used in printing environment.

Waterless printing is a type of offset lithographic printing that don't require water or dampening systems used in traditional printing. This technology uses a special silicone rubber coated printing plate, special ink, and means of temperature control on press. It is less environmentally damaging than conventional lithographic printing. The use of such technologies in current printers should be encouraged

Traditional printing technologies consume vast amount of resources, such as water, chemicals and energy. Almost all the big presses need thousands liters of water annually as part of their printing requirements. Using the technological advancement, waterless printing is able to reduce these environmental impacts. This printing technology uses Computer to plate (CtP) technology and silicon plates to eliminate chemicals and water altogether. Some of the waterless printers also use vegetable-based inks and Direct Ink (DI) technology exclusively to further reduce resource use, pollution and VOCs emissions.

The traditional waterless printing use dampening solutions that contain alcohols or petroleum-based solvents. These solutions constitutes of volatile organic compounds that contribute to smog. But a waterless press don't need 100,000 liters of water and 10,000 liters of alcohol annually that is consumed by a typical mid-size printer. In that way it wouldn't contribute to environmental problems.

At present waterless presses are running in the minority but they are rapidly gaining popularity. The waterless presses are also being praised for the reduced paper set-up waste and the high quality color reproduction.

Green plastics

Green Plastics, sometimes also called Bioplastics, are plastics that are biodegradable and are usually made mostly or entirely from renewable resources. Frequently there is also a focus on environmentally friendly processing. Green plastics are the focus of an emerging industry focused on making convenient living consistent with environmental stability.

Like all plastics, bioplastics are composed of a polymer, combined with plasticizers and additives, and processed using extrusion or thermosetting. What makes green plastics "green" is one or more of the following properties:

1. they are biodegradable
2. they are made from renewable ingredients
3. they have environmentally friendly processing

Because different compounds can satisfy some or all of these criteria to different degrees, there are different "degrees of green" in green plastics. To evaluate how "green" a plastic material is, you need to ask three questions:

1. how quickly can the plastic be re-integrated into the environment after it is no longer being used?
2. how quickly are the ingredients that go into making the plastic created in the environment?
3. how much pollution or waste is created during the process of actually making the plastic?

Traditional plastics fail on all three of these points.

Automotive step towards nature

Honda's new hydrogen-powered vehicle, set for leasing within a few months, radically reduced the sizes of its fuel cell and motor for a superclean car with the same interior space as a regular car, engineers said Tuesday.

That's a vast improvement from the company's first such model introduced nearly a decade ago. The fuel cell was so bulky that the car could barely seat one person and crept along at a snail's pace.

The new FCX Clarity reaches maximum speed of 160 kilometres an hour and comfortably seats four people.