The United States of America Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act places regulations and restrictions on lead and phthalate content in plastic on children’s products: such as plastic spiral binding for children’s books.

A number of plastic spiral binding filament and coil  suppliers produce materials that comply with CPSIA legislation.   Make sure that your suppliers also can confirm through an independent, accredited U.S. lab that all of its products are lead-free and phthalate-free.  Ask them to provide you with CPSIA Certificates of Conformity on the products you use to bind your books.

Use consumer safe products in all your bindery and finishing work.

And make sure that you communicate your use of safe products to your customers!

As a trade bindery in the Printing Industry we package a number of our finished products in shrink film. Shrink film can take hundreds of years to biodegrade.

In our ongoing search for environmentally friendly products, we have found a new biodegradable shrink film.  It is a polyolefin heat shrink film that degrades over a 3 to 5 year period (as compared to a regular shrink film product that can take hundreds of years in the landfill to decompose).

Sourcing this product in North America was a significant challenge.  We had to go global!  The product is used in the U.K. and that’s where we first found it; but it is manufactured in France. We tracked it to the U.S. and found a sales office in Eastern U.S. who was handling it.  We’re from the West Coast of Canada so we needed to locate a distributor closer to us.  We found one in Edmonton, Alberta.

After running some trials (and making some equipment changes), we are extremely pleased with how well the product runs and performs.  It has good sealing and shrinkage properties at low temperatures and can run on both manual and automatic equipment.

The film degrades at the end of its useful life: it fragments and oxidizes through the long term effect of light and heat. It then becomes assimilated by the soil and eventually disappears in the landfill, leaving only water, carbon dioxide and biomass.

Do the right thing: use environmentally friendly packaging materials!

I was contacted late last week by a writer hired by the Canadian Printing Industry Sector Council (CPISC).  She’s writing content for a role playing game for elementary school children: A Day in the Life … of a Pressman, or Bindery Operator, or Pre-Press Technician. The writer asked for input and I sent her a fairly detailed “day in the life of a bindery operator” activity list.

What resonated for me in putting the activity list together was that the key activities focused on the ability to read carefully, check (and double check), organize, communicate, lead, make decisions, set up and run equipment. Specific equipment knowledge is of course important; but equally important are communication skills, leadership and decision making skills, planning and organization skills.  These are attributes we look for in all of our employees (and that we’ve found in the long term employees who work at Pacific Bindery Services Ltd.).

The goal of the CPISC project is to raise the profile of Print as an occupation at a very early age … if children find the industry challenging and fun they will be more likely to want to work in the Printing Industry.

The answer – from a bindery perspective – is that it depends on what binding and finishing processes you want to do with the job; how much ink coverage is on the paper; how quick a turn-around is needed (is there time to properly dry and cure?); will the job need to be handled multiple times (and therefore need extra protection); will the job be shipped long distances (and therefore need more protection); will the job be individually shrink wrapped, polybagged, or inserted into envelopes – or shipped loose?

These are just some of the questions you need to ask before you determine how you need to finish the cover and text pages of a perfect bound book.

Coatings, varnishes and/or laminates are all designed to protect the printed product – and to add visual (glossy or matte) and tactile (touch and feel) elements.

It’s important for designers and printers to recognize that in the perfect binding process all product (both cover and text) travels through nip points,  grippers and over/under belts and conveyors.

This travel puts pressure on the sheet that can cause scuffing, marking, and/or scratching – particularly if the ink is not fully dry.

When we receive printed product, we test for scuffing and ink dryness. If we are concerned about the printed product, we contact our customer to let them know and to find out how they’d like to handle it. Sometimes it means that we need to hold the product for an extra day – to dry.  Sometimes it means that the cover needs to be protected with a plastic laminate. Sometimes it means that the product needs a UV coating. In all instances, we work with our customer to find the best solution.

Ensuring that you plan for coatings, varnishes or laminates at the beginning of your project will mean that quick turn-around times can be met and will mean that  your product will be a ‘perfectly bound’ book at the end of the mechanical perfect binding process.

P.S.  This is not an ‘up-sell’ for Pacific Bindery Services – we do not sell coating, varnishing or laminating services.

Have any printers or binderies had a look at the SGP website (http://www.sgppartnership.org)? The SGP has a certification program for sustainable print industry companies: incorporating green business practices, environmental initiatives, corporate social responsibility and the economics of making it work.