Efforts to promote sustainable development goals (SDGs) constitute a common challenge for all companies. In the printing industry, environmental measures have four main categories: curbing greenhouse gas emissions, creating a recycling-oriented society, reducing environmental pollutants, and addressing residents' environmental concerns. With a focus on these four measures, this paper discusses the contents and results of the Carbon Neutral Declaration and Voluntary Action Plan for the Environment undertaken by the Japan Federation of Printing Industries. Moreover, the paper lists specific actions to realize SDGs and shows how the environmental measures taken by the printing industry correspond to the SDGs. This list contains items associated with Green Printing Certification Criteria (GPCC); and further, the relationship between GPCC and SDGs is explained.

The commercial printing market, consisting of paper media such as advertisements and newspapers, has been declining owing to the acceleration of the digitalization trend in recent years. In contrast, the flexible packaging printing market, which primarily uses film substrates in printing, has exhibited steady growth in recent years. However, flexible packaging typically involves gravure printing using solvent inks that are hazardous to the environment and human health owing to the emitted solvent. In this study, we developed a new printing system by using a waterless offset plate and an original EB curable ink, which requires no dampening water or heat, superseding the printing method using solvents such as gravure printing. The proposed system is expected to contribute significantly to a sustainable society by achieving substantial CO₂ emission reduction and a VOC-free printing process.

A supercritical fluid is a highly versatile solvent used in materials engineering and could be utilized to develop sustainable and green processes for synthesizing and manufacturing functional materials. In particular, supercritical CO₂ (scCO₂) can be used to reduce energy and material consumption, lowering the material intensity of the subject. The key to the successful application of scCO₂ is the exploitation of its favorable properties for both heat and mass transfer. Applications in materials engineering that take advantage of the mass-transfer properties of scCO₂ (viscosity reduction and diffusivity) have been widely demonstrated in the literature. The development of materials engineering systems will require critical analysis of both pre- and post-process energy and solvent consumption to achieve sustainable production of new materials. It is expected that scCO₂ will play an important role in materials engineering, and the development of new protocols, methodologies, and applications are anticipated.

Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs), the color of which originates from localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR), are applied to the yellow pigment for stained glass. In this study, we synthesized AgNPs with different particle sizes via the thermal decomposition of silver oxalate and dispersed them in 1-butanol by using a phosphate ester as a dispersant. This dispersion was applied to a polyvinyl chloride film, and its color was examined. Consequently, a novel method that can control a^* and b^* in the CIE 1976 L^*a^*b^* color space by optimizing the size and dispersant of AgNPs was developed. The proposed color control method realizes color expressions, such as gold and copper.