It is a widespread myth that inks these days are vegetable rather than petroleum based. A myth I believed until just now.

Link below:

Soy Ink Applications
Soy ink (primarily color) is used by one-third of U.S. newspapers and 90-95% of the over 1,500 daily newspapers. Nearly one-fourth of the nationÂs 50,000 commercial printers use soy inks. Vegetable oil-based inks tend to yield brighter colors than petroleum-based inks. Black inks have remained predominantly petroleum-based, since the cost of crude oil has tended to undercut the cost of crude soybean oil.

Now, this info flies in the face of the myths. The first myth is that the black ink is almost always soy based and it is the colored inks less likely to be soy based. The above info contradicts this.

At the link it says the 1994 Vegetable Ink Printing Act requires those printers with government contracts to 'prefer' vegetable based inks.

In any event, what I understand is that the ink itself isn't too bad, it is the cleanup process at the printers after using petroleum inks that is most of the environmental concern.

Thanks for bringing this up, I wasn't aware there was still so much petroleum based printing going on.

Here is a link that might be useful: linky

I wonder just how much petro based inks are still being used - your link, user, is from 1999, and that's the newest information I can find, with most being 91-97

considering that by the early 90's, soy inks were competitively priced, and by the time of the 94 federal law, soy inks were available for the majority of processes, I'd expect that as the price of petroleum has increased, the use of soy inks has too

the main problem with petro-based inks is in the drying process when they gas off VOC's, as the petro part is solvents [black ink isn't black cuz it's oil, tho it is carbon]

I think there's some confused info about newsprint and inks - the veg/petro base is the "carrier" that is used to apply pigments to paper - newspapers appear to primarily use mineral oil as a carrier, which is absorbed into the sheet pulp [and as a result can rub off on your hands], but other "high end" printing processes prefer petro based carriers which dry by evaporation

also, I think that the black print pigment on newspapers is always carbonblack, or lampblack, sometimes called "soot", as that's the only black ink pigment I've been able to track down that can consistently produce the sharp lines necessary, and of course that has to be "petro based" as it's a combustion byproduct, but saying black inks are "petroleum" based, doesn't necessarily mean petroleum carrier, but could be petroleum pigment

bottom line is there's so little actual ink residue left on the paper [20 microL per page judging by the link above], that I can't imagine it'll create any problems in the compost or worm bin - at least I haven't seen any giant mutant worms in my compost that's been getting shredded paper for years, and my compost hasn't created any problems growing veggies - think about the percentage of paper in a worm bin, and the percentage of ink residues on that paper, and remember that soil bacteria is what's used to bio-remediate petro spills

Bill

Somewhere out there is a USDA site that says that the unions got rid of the petroleum based inks. (There were workplace environment concerns and once the union shops had switched it was cheaper for the non-union shops to switch too.) This would have probably been post '99.

That site suggested that "cheap" wrapping paper color and "high quality" print color might originate outsided the country or in non-union shops. I thought it interesting that the two extremes in color may still have been suspect at the time the link was undated.

Because persons still want to argue both sides of this I won't bother to chase down the link again. If you feel that you really, really want to know start searching USDA and compost and then follow the links within the hits you get with that search.