Carbon Footprint - Application in Graphic Art Technology

The need for more sustainable products and processes has triggered the development of a large number of environmental assessment tools. These tools measure environmental performance and identify improvement potentials from the environmental point of view. The life cycle assessment (lca) methods take into account all effects on the environment, direct and indirect resource inputs and/or emissions during the whole life cycle of products. The carbon footprint is a sub-set of data covered by life cycle assessment. The aim of this paper is to describe the potential environmental impacts (greenhouse gases, carbon footprint) of printed paper and new media.