Study of print suitability of environment-friendly plastics using flexography printing

Abstract

Environmental-friendly plastics (EFP) are new alternatives of fossil-based plastics. The EFP family mainly constitutes bio-plastics/bio-attributed plastics and post-consumer recycled plastics (PCR). EFP contributes around 10% of total plastics production in global plastic production. Presently EFP are mostly used in grocery bags, bin liners, compostable garbage bags and single-use plastics with single or spot color printing. Multi-color printing can add value or open new horizons for these materials, leading to high-value applications. It can also be used for high-speed printing or flexible packaging applications. Plastics available in this category come from both fossil-based and bio-based sources. Fossil-based bioplastics has almost similar degree of print suitability but materials coming from bio-based sources are yet to be explored for print suitability, especially with high-speed multi-color printing machines. Flexographic printing is known for high-quality and high-speed printing on different substrates, including paper, conventional plastics and fossil-based bio-plastics. The advantage of having a common impression cylinder (CIC) arrangement and the requirement of less pressure during printing makes it suitable for consideration for printing on EFP. Hence, this study, print suitability of EFP using flexography printing, is an attempt to explore the mutual compatibility of these substrates and printing process, which will prove to be a boon in the future for establishing EFP as a strong substitute for replacing conventional plastics.