If you are a textile screen printer and you have customers asking about “environmentally friendly”, “organic” or “green” garments and inks, you may just be interested in a presentation that a PolyOne executive of their Wilflex ink division recently gave.
He made the point that while people asked for “green” they could seldom explain what that meant. For instance, did they mean “organic”, “non-phthalate”, “non-PVC”, all of those things, or something else entirely? He emphasised the importance of questioning anyone asking for “green” as to what exactly they meant.
California is the first state in the U.S. and, at this time, still the only state clearly defining “green” to some concrete extent by specifically prohibiting certain chemicals effective January 1, 2009. We’ll spare you the chemical names and definitions here, but we can forward the information that we have if you call us toll-free at 1-800-661-7766 or email us at info@screenflex.ca The important point though is that Wilflex already has three ink types to deal with the various “green” demands that your customers might have.
The Wilflex Epic Series is a non-phthalate ink. Wilflex QuantumOne is a non-phthalate, non-PVC, acrylic-based ink. Wilflex Oasis is a complete line of water-based inks including non-formaldehyde discharge inks to inks for contemporary fashion-driven textured effects.
As far as “organic” garments are concerned, we are told that very few cottons are organically grown and that at this time the only truly “organic” cotton is grown on a limited scale in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. We suggest that next time anybody claims to have “organic” garments, you ask them where the cotton was grown and to provide proof that it was organically grown.
As we have suggested in another article in this newsletter, beware of the ill-informed or the unscrupulous who will miss-represent themselves or their products as “green”. Beware of Greenfarce.