Although Japanese environmental regulations, and health and safety laws set tolerance levels for noise and vibration generated by printing presses, maintaining these levels in web offset presses are becoming increasingly difficult. This is particularly true in terms of noise, as today's presses tend to be larger and provide faster running speeds for the purpose of improving productivity. The most effective means for reducing noise levels is to enclose the entire web press or the printing unit and folder sections of the press in soundproofing barriers. Laying the proper foundation to support the press is essential for minimizing vibration of buildings within the printing plant. Mechanically induced problems with the press can lead to excessive noise and vibration, and daily maintenance is also necessary to protect the press equipment and alleviate these problems.

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Suspended particulate matter (SPM) is causative agent of a respiratory obstacle, and it is a second generated substance from a volatile organic compound (VOC) which discharged. It has to restrain release of VOC discharged from fixed outbreak source as a part of Japanese atmosphere environmental improvement. It is also considered to be a problem that VOC discharged from a gravure process. For release of VOC, regulations by law have been enforced, and a gravure process is also a target of this low, too. In a gravure process, restraining release of toluene has been performed, but discharge restraint of all VOC is demanded now. Therefore I will explain about release restraint measures of VOC in gravure process.

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More than 30 years have passed since Toray Waterless Plate, an offset printing plate which creates the non-image area by ink-repelling silicone, instead of dampening water, has been commercialized. In the meantime, the major plate type has converted from analog to CTP. The waterless printing method itself is much easier to use compared to the past, due to the advance and accumulation of technology for related equipments and materials, such as dedicate ink for waterless printing. This improvement of usability has helped expand the field of use. Waterless printing is known to be an environmentally friendly printing method, which does not create waste liquid during the pre-press process, and does not require dampening water during printing. Due to this environmental merit, waterless printing has attracted the printers' attention in areas such as Europe where the awareness to environment is high, and many installations has been carried out from the early stage. In Japan, the visibility of waterless being an eco-friendly printing method has recently increased, based on the rising awareness of the society towards environmental issues. On behalf of this background, the usage of waterless is growing since many printers started to use this technology as a countermeasure against environmental issues.

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The practical use of environmental management system (EMS) in Japanese companies has shown a major progress in these 10 years. In 1990s, manufacturers started EMS (certified ISO14001) in a narrow scope, individual plant base without the comprehensive design. However, in 2000, top management realized that it was necessary to convert this small EMS into an integrated company-wide system in order to create an effective action for preventing pollution. Yet a new problem has appeared. Larger EMS tends to make individual employee's commitment to environment thinner. The printing industry has two characteristics on environmental aspect. One is a high potential of environment burden of plant to the community; another is a capacity to promote communication between clients and society on the importance of environment through printed media. Therefore, printing companies are now expected to provide "eco-solution" services that will lead to maximize corporate value of their clients.

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The Japanese printing industry, more than 90%, is comprised of medium - small sized enterprises. It is attended with much difficulty for each enterprise to elaborate and implement efforts for reduction of environmental burdens. To earn social acclaim as the environmental industry, The Japan Federation of Printing Industries is taking the lead in the promotion to reduce environmental burdens. Here, I would like to present our activities.

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Organic compounds having high boiling points included in inkjet inks remain in the printed media after printing. It has been said that these residual organic compounds influenced the scratch-fastness of pigment ink prints but the detailed mechanisms have not been reported. Glycerin was selected as a typical example of those organic compounds. Pyrolysis gas chromatography was used to quantify the residual glycerin in the pigment ink layer. It was found that glycerin remained in the pigment ink layer for at least 72 hours after printing. The total amount of the residual glycerin varied greatly depending on the paper samples. The discrepancy results between changes of contact angle of glycerin and the rate of glycerin absorption into various paper samples were assumed to be due to the difference in the diffusion rate of residual glycerin by extensional wetting depending on the surface properties of the various coatings of the samples. In addition, the amount of residual glycerin was inversely proportional to the scratch-fastness of the pigment ink layers. It seems that residual glycerin prevents cohesion between particles of the ink pigment.

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We have developed screens for printing ultra-thin films based on a result that hybrid fibre (Vecry®), which is composed of a sheath and a core, is easily deformed due to plastic property of the core that consists of thermotropic liquid crystalline polymer. For the screen-mesh depressed by calendaring, the breaking strength is maintained at 93% or more while the thickness change rate decreases by 65% or less. Also, these screen-meshes have uniform flatness. We have obtained the screen-mesh with a thin thickness of 16 μm, a large open area ratio (OPA) of 53%, and a practical breaking strength of 43 N⁄cm by calendaring the screen-mesh, while a mesh count and a thread diameter of which are 130 per inch and 23 μm, respectively. The ultra-thin film of an organic electroluminescent polymer at the thickness of 130 nm is formed by screen-printing with this screen-mesh. AFM shows that the thickness deviation is less than 10 nm, and the surface roughness of Ra and Rz are 0.4 nm and 1.3 nm, respectively. We find that this film is similar to the spin-coated films.

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