Our Environmentally Friendly approach to Printing our Unique Designs

It’s more important than ever to ensure that as individuals and businesses, we are doing everything in our power to reduce our impact on the environment in our everyday lives.

While it goes without saying that most manufacturing processes do contribute to harmful waste and negative environmental impacts to some extent, innovative technologies now mean that companies have more options when it comes to seeking out more environmentally methods of producing goods.

When it comes to producing textiles, although more expensive than traditional printing, the most environmentally friendly printing method is digital printing. Not only is it a fast and efficient way to translate unique designs onto fabrics, and one which yields stunning results, but it is highly regarded as one of the most eco-friendly printing methods available.

Eco-friendly benefits of digital printing

The advanced technologies behind digital printing are more sustainable by nature, than any other method of printing. But, why?

Less waste

Printing direct to garment (DTG) ultimately reduces waste, as only the amount of ink required to print the design will be used. Alternative methods such as screen printing are known to use excessive amounts of ink in order to translate the design on to the fabric, contributing to potentially harmful chemical waste.

Less set-up equipment

Naturally, the digital printing method is straight forward in the way that less set up equipment is needed, i.e. there are no screens or plates that need to be produced to create individual designs. This type of equipment needed for the likes of screen and rotary printing will eventually go to waste once the design has completed production and is no longer usable.

Less water used

Water pollution is the highest environmental risk factor in textiles. In previous years, the environmental impact from the textile industry alone was huge – using unnecessary amounts of water and energy to produce printed fabrics.

As technologies moved forward and digital printing increased in popularity, fespa.com reported that digital textile printing saved over 40 billion litres of water worldwide in 2018. This contributed to a huge reduction in the amount of water that was used, wasted and polluted.

This is due to how the technology eliminates the need for a substantial amount of water and electricity requried for the preparation, processing and clean-ups used in other methods such as screen printing.

As digital printing uses pigments which achieve colour fastness through heat fixation, water isn’t needed for pretreatments or post-processing such as steaming and washing.

Designs are digitally submitted

Screen and rotary printing techniques typically require transfer paper in order to start the printing process. In digital printing, however, designs can be digitally submitted and then printed directly from the machine to the fabric, meaning that no transfer paper is necessary, therefore reducing the amount of waste produced.

All of these factors considered make digital printing perfect choice for environmentally conscious business owners and designers. This is particularly important in the textile industry of today.

Hunant prioritises sustainability as one of our core company values. We are heavily invested in minimising our environmental footprint, and are proactive with our approach in reducing our impact on the environment not only through our printing processes, but as a company on the whole.

Using the latest innovations and technologies, we continuously strive to improve our sustainability levels with everything we do. We firmly believe that if we all do our bit, for our business and for the planet, it all adds up and makes a huge difference.