Sponsored by Mingo Press

Let’s talk about environmental responsibility. (Wait! Where are you going? Come back!)

Parenthetical quips aside, this can be a sticky issue for those of us working in the increasingly rarefied world of print. We love everything about paper—the feel, the look, the smell, the way ink interacts with the stock in surprising and beautiful ways. For many of us, it’s our canvas, no different than the stretched cotton or linen of a painter, the clay of a potter, the marble or stone of a sculptor.

But… We all know that paper production isn’t the greenest industry, to say the least, right? According to environmental group The World Counts, it takes an average of five liters of water to produce one piece of A4 paper (8¼ x 11¾ inches, the international standard used by most countries). To put it another way, printing one Sunday edition of the New York Times requires approximately 75,000 trees.

It’s no surprise that certain petroleum-based inks can be at odds with living a green life as well. And the world throws away like a million ink cartridges a day (literally).

Yikes. Facepalm. WTF. All the exclamatory interjections.

So, what’s a print nerd to do?

Well, here’s a more heartening statistic: Recycling one ton of paper saves around 682.5 gallons of oil, 26,500 liters of water, and 17 trees. As for the ink? In recent years a slew of more environmentally friendly petroleum alternatives have popped up.

So, there are choices now. How do you make the right one?

At Mingo Press, we want to be good stewards of the environment and minimize the carbon footprint we leave for our children. That’s why we make sustainable printing easy.

Paper is a sustainable resource. When you think of recycled paper you might think of an ugly brown stock that looks like, well, recycled garbage—you know the kind, and you won’t find it at Mingo. What you will find? An array of beautiful choices, suitable for all kinds of printing needs, that are composed of anywhere from 10 to 100 percent post-consumer waste.

As for inks, we offer a whopping 1,867 Pantone shades that are soy-based and don’t contain toxic solvents, unlike their petroleum counterparts. We offer aqueous (water-based) coatings that are friendly to the environment while protecting your print job. And our offset printing technique is incredibly efficient, using a minimal amount of ink in the process—inks that are oil-based and chemical-free, unlike many paints.

The bottom line: We believe there’s a way to realize your vision, to create a beautiful piece of physical art, to execute high-volume commercial print jobs, without destroying the planet. We take this responsibility very seriously, as everyone should, and we’re always working to find ways to be even more efficient, more sustainable, and kinder to our planet. Because we might love printing, but we love our children and grandchildren more. ca