Key Findings
- New study supports previous claims that soy ink helps minimize environmental burdens associated with printing.
- Soybean agriculture uses only 0.5 percent of the total energy needed to produce soy ink.
- Soybeans temporarily remove damaging carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, from the atmosphere. Using minimum- or no-till farming methods reduces water runoff and slows the release of carbon dioxide back into the air when the soybean plant decays.
- Tall oil rosins - used to manufacture many types of ink - are the primary contributors to soy ink's ozone depletion potential.
- The majority of air emissions released during soy ink's life cycle result from fossil fuel combustion. Extraction and processing of raw materials for othe printing ink ingredients share the burden for release of these emissions.
- Five of the major soybean-growing states, representing 41.2 percent of production, use a sustainable resource - rainfall - for soybean farming. Nine states use irrigation for soybean farming, but only two of them have such a limited supply of surface water and groundwater that irrigation use is a concern.
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