Operational Commitment to Sound Environmental Practices

Before we'd heard the words Sustainability and Green associated with the commitment to consume fewer raw materials and reduce output of materials into our air, water and solid waste streams, TULSACK ran its business in an environmentally sound manner. It’s fair to say that we’ve been Green since before Green was cool - or demanded by customers. It’s made good business sense, and it’s often embodied in law and safety regulations that all responsible converters must follow. Best practices include:

- TULSACK has used environmentally friendly water based inks exclusively for over two decades.
- Unused inks are reblended into darker “work off” colors, or reprocessed with modern technology separating and recovering reusable water from pigment, dramatically reducing water consumption and solid waste.
- Every pound of waste paper - bag paper, boxes, handle material, bundle wrap and even shredded office waste paper - is collected and sold into the recovered fiber market.
- Throughout the 1980’s and 90’s, TULSACK exclusively used a 40% post consumer content recycled natural paper, until the mill withdrew from the paper market and devoted its output to linerboard for corrugated boxes.
- Our packaging - the cases/bundles our bags go into and the manner in which we stack pallets - is designed to support the most efficient utilization of truck trailer capacity possible. The result is substantially less fuel needed to deliver TULSACK products.
- Addition of 100% Recycled Natural Kraft – minimum 95% Post Consumer Content – across our entire custom printed, stock product and post converted product line in 2008.
- Our 2008 Catalog is produced on Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified paper by an FSC certified printer, a choice we will continue to make in the future.

Soy Inks
- Not too often, but with increasing frequency, we are asked if our bags can be printed with Soy inks. Soy based inks have a limited – some would say no - role in flexographic printing. We only print flexographically.
- Flexographic inks are thin and watery to begin with. Over the years the hazardous (to air and employees) chemical solvents that made up the bulk of the solution in which pigments were dispersed has been replaced by water.
- Offset litho inks are thick and pasty. The material within which pigments are dispersed are petroleum based compounds. It is these thick, pasty compounds that Soy oil is designed to replace in offset litho inks.
- To repeat, water is the solvent replacement in flexographic inks. Soy oil is not a suitable solvent replacement for flexo inks in our process. Ink experts we have talked with report that attempts to use Soy oil in flexo inks and our process required a material increase in chemical solvents to make the ink perform to minimum levels of printability, and to prevent the inks from rubbing off the package.