Colormaker Industries, which produces water-based Permaset screen-printing inks, is taking steps to ensure its products and production are even more sustainable and eco-friendly.
It is looking at getting its Permaset Aqua SuperCover White approved for the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) standard, which ensures the organic status of textiles from the raw materials through to manufacturing, printing and labelling.
With long-term aims to extend GOTS approval to other Permaset inks, Colormaker is exploring how much demand there is from printers. Being water-based, Permaset inks already appeal to decorators seeking a more environmentally friendly alternative to plastisol inks.
Managing director David Stuart said: “We’ve been approached by a number of long-time Permaset users in the UK and Europe who are themselves obtaining GOTS approval and it just makes sense as part of our evolution.”
The company, based in Australia, has also pledged to become Carbon Neutral by 2025 – ahead of its previous target of 2030.
To achieve this, it installed 100 kW of solar panels two years ago and, because of the amount of surplus electricity that it generates, it is now looking to electrify more of its inputs that rely on fossil fuels.
Other steps have included buying more efficient pumps and an electric vehicle last year as well as buying and planting trees to capture and store atmospheric carbon dioxide.
In July this year, it installed a more efficient compressor that reduced its total energy purchases by a further 38%. This month, it replaced its old crane, which was badly leaking air, with a new more efficient one.
David said: “It’s an exciting time with lots to do, but we’re seeing immediate benefit from virtually every step that we take and are receiving enormous encouragement from our dedicated users around the world.”
Over the next few years, Colormaker plans to buy more electric vehicles and to further reduce the carbon footprint of freight coming in and going out.
It intends to upgrade its water treatment facility to enable more water to be reused in production, with the objective of reducing water usage by 40% to 60%.
Another plan is to buy a carbon farm. The major objective of that will be to capture and store carbon dioxide in the soil to offset the emissions that Colomaker is still unable to avoid by 2025.
David said: “As a society, first-world countries are putting four to five times as much carbon into the atmosphere as the world can detox and it’s getting worse rather than better.
“The climate disasters that we’re having right now – bushfires in Australia, forest fires in the USA and right across Europe, unprecedented floods – are all symptoms of the CO2 that’s in the atmosphere right now, not what will be in five or 10 or 20 or 30 years.
“We really don’t have a moment to waste. Those of us that can should. If not us, who? If not now, when?”
