Sustainable fine art printing

Creating fine art prints and caring for the environment
Is it possible?

We all need to take sustainability seriously these days. That’s easy to say, but sustainability and printing don’t always go hand-in-hand. Paper — for the most part — comes from trees.

It’s not possible right now to create high-quality art prints on recycled paper, but the print industry is working hard to make that happen. In the meantime, it’s worth remembering that beautiful art prints are not throw-away products — they’re designed to last and be appreciated for years. One print should last a lifetime if you care for it properly, it shouldn’t end up in the recycling bin at the end of the year.

If you do want your art prints to endure, you should consider printing on cotton rag paper. You might not have heard of it before, but it is a more environmentally sound choice. First up, cotton rag paper is made primarily from cotton linters or cloth offcuts — so it’s using materials that would probably otherwise end up in landfill, they’ll also handle a greater variety of environmental conditions and outlast wood based paper.

Epson Printers

Does the printing platform matter? We believe that the actual printing equipment plays an essential part in producing a more sustainable outcome. This is one reason why we only work with Epson printers for all our colour-critical, high-quality work. Epson’s environmental policies run deep within the company — you can read about them here.

Colour-stable printheads are a must for us. Many competing brands work with lower-grade consumable printheads. This means every print will be slightly different — depending on the printhead’s age and usage.

Epson sets the benchmark for high quality, repeatable, colour stable prints and is recognised as the only commercially accepted proofing platform. This also minimises wastage by achieving a consistent and predictable result.

We sometimes refer to our Epson water-based pigment printers as our chemical-free printers. They have genuinely revolutionised photographic printing. While we’re talking chemical-free, we no longer use traditional photographic wet chemistry containing heavy metals. Instead, we now have prints that look better (have a greater gamut) and last longer.

Recyclability and minimising waste

After initially sourcing ready-made packaging, we switched to manufacturing our own. Now we can use recyclable and non-bleached materials whilst minimising storage and wastage by producing packaging on demand.

Our packaging has also reduced transport damage — further minimising wastage and preserving resources. We are proud of our uniquely designed boxes and frequently get requests for extras. So much so that you’ll soon be able to purchase them as separate items in our shop.

And finally… A smaller footprint

We’re on a journey to creating a smaller environmental footprint — and this is not the end of the story. If you have some suggestions to help us further improve our environmental credentials, we’d love to hear from you. After all, we all share the same desire to minimise our impact on the planet. Get in touch