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Home: Renewable Energy Articles: Green Photo Print
Green Photo PrintAs someone who loves to create images, one long-ago picture now stands out clearly in Rick Colson's mind: That girl of so long ago grew up to be Rick's wife of 27 years and her recent illness and subsequent death from environmentally related cancer has Rick thinking a lot more about the environmental implications of many of the things he is passionate about - especially photography, print making and other forms of imaging. 
To make his ideas a reality, Colson spent more than a year researching, sourcing and testing the world's finest green papers for digital imaging with the goal of finding alternate tree-free, chlorine-free substrates comparably priced to virgin (not recycled) papers. He also sourced water-based pigmented inks that don't offgas harmful fumes, green mounting adhesives and safely biodegradable mounting substrates.  His efforts resulted in the formation of www.greenphotoprint.com of Wayland, Massachusetts. Producing everything from small prints to large format installations, greenphotoprint.com is the world's first to offer an exclusive combination of green large format printing for museum-quality display art, photographic and interior décor images. All images produced by the company are printed on 100% sustainable, tree-free, chlorine-free, acid-free and VOC-free media made of pure cotton fibers reclaimed from cottonseed oil manufacturers (food grade). Their papers are sourced locally to reduce the carbon emissions associated with transportation. This is significant when you consider that a typical cargo ship uses one gallon of fuel for every 37 feet it travels, and that air shipping consumes about one gallon of fuel per second. "On average, 40% of landfill content is paper," said Colson. "And the imaging industry has traditionally been full of carcinogens, respiratory- and neuro- toxins. Increased regulation by the EPA may have resulted in safer worker conditions at large format printers, but end users are generally unaware of the potential health risks associated with many forms of output." Colson added, " What do you get when you mix wood pulp and the elemental chlorine often found in bleached papers? The answer is dioxins, the single most carcinogenic class of chemicals known to man."  To produce more green, museum-quality applications, greenphotoprint.com creates its own color profiles for a variety of media types including matte and semi-gloss cotton papers and 100% cotton canvas. The inks they use are aqueous and pigmented, which means they're made with water and insoluble colorants and they dry without emitting airborne toxins or fumes. "You would be hard pressed to find a better paper from either a quality or environmental perspective," commented Colson. "Our prints are so pure that I wouldn't hesitate to hang one over a baby's crib five minutes after it was printed." Among the many projects produced by greenphotoprint.com, a series of twenty-five images by artist Wendy Jean Hyde were recently installed at Boston's prestigious Museum of Fine Arts. They were made to museum standards using a 12-color, 44-inch aqueous pigment printer with their proprietary combination of hardware and inks. In addition, greenphotoprint.com recently finished more than 500 large-format prints now hung in healthcare and hospitality facilities where chemical sensitivity might be an issue. Although www.greenphotoprint.com has only been established for less than a year-and-a-half, Rick Colson and his efforts are certainly making their mark in the digital imaging industry. By pushing others to question their methods, he is indeed evoking change and highlighting a shifting mentality toward environmentally-sound practices in photography, the arts, the digital imaging industry and beyond. "As artists, designers and image makers, others look to us to for inspiration and creative leadership. Surely, being green, and helping others to be more ecologically minded and healthier is not only a worthy goal, it's a privilege," said Colson. Renewable Energy Articles
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