Blue Breeze Eco Wedding Invitation
InviteSite is a green business, so customers sometimes ask if we print with soy inks. Common printers inks are either rubber or oil based and soy was invented decades ago as an attempt at an environmental substitute for these. The idea was to replace petroleum based oil with soy based oil.
This does not work very well, and over the years formulations were adjusted until some printers could tolerate working with ink that was perhaps 20% soy mixed with petroleum base.
We have done our own experiments with soy and found that traditonal oil based inks are much more reliable in all types of temperatures and weather. Because of this, we consider traditional ink formulations to be more environmentally friendly than soy. This is because when you try to work with an ink that does not work well consistently, you waste paper, plus you waste energy and time.
This may seem minor, and some people would encourage us to continue to learn to work with soy until we are experts, but recent increases in soy production have been having a detrimental effect on our environment to the point that we even doubt that soy is greener to produce than petroleum. Because of the increased demand for soy, rain forests are being cleared to make way for more soy production. The problem became so pronounced that groups like Greenpeace are forging deals with large grocers and distributors like McDonalds that they will not purchase soy from farms that are using new land cleared of rain forest.
Our invitations, printed on treefree papers with linseed oil inks, are the best choice you can make for any number of reasons, including beauty, archival longevity, and environmental sustainablity.