Environmental Sustainability in Fine Art Printing

[Ernst Dinkla]

Don't know if anyone is still following this thread any longer. It took well over 200 hours but I've finished the report on "Environmental Sustainability in Fine Art Printing". It took much work but I learned everything I've ever wanted to know about ink and media.

I'm hoping to do an article about the report in Art Business News. I'm only sharing it with people I know until I get some PR on the thing. I'd like to get some mileage out of it before the competition gets it.

Regards,

Damon

Damon,

There hasn't been much news to follow over the last months.

The subject in general gets the attention of more people so another thread with another name may be wiser.

There was no reply by me on your message about the cotton linters in the former thread, it became a bit too heated there in my opinion. But I do not agree with your statement that waste of a crop becomes ecologically sound as a byproduct if the crop itself isn't. The cotton linters.

I agree that more information is needed. Certificates of a controlled production system. Verifiable by the customer and independent institutes. A transparant report on the pulp sources, names of plantations, input and output, chemicals used from fertilizer to pulp, labourer's exposure to chemicals, energy used versus fiber quality/tons of pulp produced etc. All set against existing cellulose and alpha-cellulose pulp sources.

Hope you can publish this article. I agree that it is a complicated subject and that hard facts should replace the gut feelings expressed in opinions.


met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla

Try: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wide_Inkjet_Printers/

[Brian Gilkes]

Cotton is not the only way to go. Bamboo and sugar cane have emerged relatively recently and hemp, mulberry and other fibers have been used in Japan for centuries. I've been using a bit of kozo (a mulberry) of late and it has qualities that cotton does not.
As I understand it the cultivation is traditional and does not involve the high chemical and water imports of cotton.
The problem , I guess, with using non -cotton fibers is that if minority crops are desired over the current mainstream then techniques that are undesirable may be intensified  or introduced in to practices that are more benign.
Sigh
Brian
www.pharoseditions.com.au