Environmental Impacts of a Printing Plates that In-plant Printers Should Consider

By John Zarwan

Sources of Waste

Processing of plates consumes three primary resources: chemistry to develop or process the plates, energy to run the processing unit, and water to rinse the plate, dilute the chemistry, or clean the unit. Similarly, processing generates waste, which must be disposed of, in the form of spent chemistry, waste water, and containers. Some plates, such as silver-based violet plates, also require a silver recovery system. Each plate type and process consumes different amounts of these resources, depending on the imaging laser, emulsions used, and chemical and physical reactions required to develop or wash up the plate.