Vegetable oil based inks

Welcome to print.coop, the ink-on-paper pages from specialist printing and design co-operative, Calverts. We produce high quality, economical and sustainable, commercial print. We're experts in the latest and best litho and digital printing technology, as well as traditional craft applications. We know almost every commodity grade or 'designer' FSC® or recycled paper on the market, and can tell you about the most cost effective formats.

our approach

Why work with Calverts?

Print buyers come to Calverts for four main reasons - our creativity, quality, expert advice and track record in sustainable printing.

We have proper conversations with our clients, to help them realise their print ambitions - from fairtrade teaching tools and low carbon travel guides to art and science comics and high end books. There's almost no print idea we can't turn into reality.

We have a hard-earned reputation as 'green' printers. We're always investing, learning and sharing what we know about every aspect of low environmental impact communications.

And Calverts worker co-operative business model means we're able to improve continuously, by putting our money into state-of-the art repro and printing hardware, software and training - instead of paying dividends to outside owners and shareholders.

All this adds up to higher quality, higher impact print; timely delivery - and a better print experience.

Get in touch and we'll help you print something beautiful.

ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY

Standards & certification

Design and print affect the environment. Calverts has therefore implemented an environmental management system to the requirements of ISO 14001 to reduce our negative environmental impacts.

We are committed to comply with or exceed the requirements of environmental legislation and other environmental initiatives to which we subscribe. We are also committed to the prevention of pollution and continual improvement.

Our objectives are to:

1) Reduce our carbon emissions

2) Reduce the impact of paper use on natural resources

3) Improve resource efficiency and recycling

We have set up programmes to achieve this with targets and time scales.

Find out more about our environmental initiatives.

Sustainability

According to our friends at Hato Press, today is 'soy ink fact day' in the US. Apparently, the American Gazette was the first to practically use the inks back in 1987. But did you know this?

Calverts K+E Bio vegetable oil based litho inks are made with a blend of linseed and soy oils, and low or no heavy metal drying catalysts and other nasty additives like cobalt. They perform exactly like mineral oil based inks, but take a bit longer to set. A question we occasionally get asked is whether these inks contain GM soya products, and the honest answer is that we don't know - but probably they do. The reason for this is that industrial grade soya oil is a global commodity product, and is therefore from mixed sources. A while back, the Americans got the World trade Organisation (WTO) to rule that European GM labelling contravenes global free trade agreements. The US, of course, is the world's largest producer of GM soya.