The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted by all the United Nations member states in 2015 as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that set out a 15-year plan to achieve the goals. In recent years, the SDGs have been set as action guidelines and indicators by various companies, educational institutions, and local governments. However, many companies still seem uncertain about how to use and implement the SDGs. Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd. (DNP) aims to synergize its unique P&I (printing & information) strengths and practice wide-ranging cooperation with its many partners to solve social issues while focusing on creating new values that meet people's expectations. DNP considers it important to have a global as well as a medium- and long-term perspective, looking 10 years into the future, and even as far ahead as 2050. Therefore, DNP has utilized the SDGs as a “yardstick for realizing an even better society.” This paper takes DNP's initiatives as an example to describe the significance of the SDGs for the printing industry.

Ikeda Printing Co,. Ltd. was founded in 1953 and celebrated its 65th anniversary in 2018. The company was a letterpress printing business when it was founded, but has since expanded to include commercial printing, company newsletters, and newspapers. It also allows for offset printing and post-binding. Ikeda Printing has been developing its printing business with the aim of realizing a sustainable society and acquiring ISO 14001 certification. In particular, the Keihinjima Plant, Ikeda Printing's main plant, has been working to improve efficiency in an environmentally friendly manner since 1995. For its environmental activities, Keihinjima Plant received the Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Award at the 17th Printing Industry Environmental Excellence Awards held in 2018. This article reviews the key points of the Printing Industry Excellence Awards and introduces the environmental initiatives of Ikeda Printing Co,. Ltd.

UV printing has been used in Japan since the 1970s owing to its high productivity and added value. UV Printing uses high-pressure mercury lamps and metal halide lamps (hereafter, UV lamps) as light sources. However, as UV lamps have a higher energy demand, they are being replaced in various printing fields by UV LED light units in recent years, as these are effective in attaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This paper first compares the features of UV LED light units with that of UV lamps. Then, it discusses the specifications of UV LED light units for each printing method, and the higher output of UV LED chips, which is the main component of UV LED light units. Finally, it presents a new technology that allows LED to be used as a UV light source in printing, specifically, a heat dissipation design technology that suppresses the inhibiting action during the curing process by purging nitrogen. These technologies are expected to be of practical use, especially from the viewpoint of energy conservation.

After the rain fall occurred, we often observed the plastic garbage such as plastic bags and PET bottles in the waterside. However, nobody knows the environmental fates of plastic garbage in the water environment. Plastics such as the container packaging are gradually decomposed in the environment, and they become microplastics. It is necessary to specify the sources in order to solve the aquatic environment pollution with microplastics. Most researchers who were focusing on the microplastics in marine tended to analyze the microplastics which size was bigger than 300 μm. Recently, some researchers start to focus on smaller size of microplastics. There are many microfibers of the fiber origin such as fleeces, which sizes were about 30 μm. It has been understood like this that the aquatic environment pollution with microplastics is serious as the size of them becomes small. To know where the microplastics are generated, and what size, and where they exist is one of the emergent issues in the world.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit in September 2015. For the realization of a sustainable society, 17 goals and 169 targets were proposed to be achieved by 2030. The SDGs are not legally binding, but rather are indicators for achieving a more sustainable future that each country should work on adopting voluntarily. However, there are signs that investors feel compelled to invest in companies that adopt SDGs as guiding standards. This is because of the increased value of the SDGs as a common “rule of thumb.” SDGs are being considered as a code of conduct in all sectors worldwide. In the future, citizens worldwide are expected to guide the companies to adopt SDGs as “consumers,” control the government as “voters,” and regulate the administrative acts as “taxpayers.” Following the citizens, the entire society is expected to come to realize the ideals of the SDGs. We have been working on supporting environmental education for teacher training courses in Cambodia for several years. We have also been teaching the ideals of SDGs as part of our environmental education course for children.