Environmental Philosophy

Located in the University Business Park Distric of Downtown Los Angeles. Indie Printing was able to use sustainable and reclaimed building materials during the renovation process of our headquarters.

Currently we are working with a consultant to figure out a more sensible and eco-conscious way for lighting and electricity usage, and continuously are investigating ways to walk the walk when it comes to the true meaning of a “green printing company.”

All too often you hear the term “recycled paper” coming from “green printers.” The truth of the mater is that it is much more complex than that. Most “eco-friendly” printing companies try to throw the term “printed on recycled paper” around in order to pacify the consumer. We realize there is much information to be passed on, and see an opportunity to educate both our customers and employees.

Below is some basic information about the papers we use for our standard products.

We use a combination of printing methods to produce our products. When it comes to inks, there are 3 different types we use.

Digital Printing = Dry Toner Ink: Dry toner inks produce virtually no VOC’s (volatile organic compounds), and do not require any type of chemical clean up.

Offset Printing = Soy Based Ink: Using soy based inks helps keep the V.O.C. (Volatile Organic Compounds) levels well below the regulated standard.

Large Format Printing = UV Ink: We use a biodegradable banner material, which will degrade (if put in a landfill) almost 50 times faster than any standard vinyl banner material. Bio-Inks are just now hitting the large format market, rest assured that Indie Printing is investigating these options as they become available.

Matte, Satin and Gloss Coatings: All coatings are water or toner based which allow our products to be easily recycled. Uncoated stocks are also available, but do not fall under our standard price lists, but can be quoted separately.

Any office generates a massive amount of paper usage on a daily basis. Our daily internal workflow has been transitioned to a more digital workflow, reducing paper usage by about 100%. We built our very own workflow, cloud based which allows our entire process from Client to Production to be cloud based.

In addition to our office paper reduction, we raised the bar and challenged our employees to utilize the metro and/or public transportation. Indie Printing pays 50% of the metro costs our employees incur when deciding to use public transportation. Encouraging the use of public transportation cuts down on the use of petroleum, as well as vehicle emissions, not to mention the wear and tear of our employee’s vehicles.

Chemistry-Free Technology: Due to the modernization, and advancement of technology in the printing industry, the use of film has become obsolete, eliminating toxic chemicals from part of the production process. Thankfully we are now able to advance even further with the help of PressTek Computer to Plate technology (CTP).

Waterless CTP Plate Making simply means that imaging plates used to transfer your image from computer to paper, can now be made without having to contaminate water, and dispose of it through a third party recycling source. Waterless plate making is another technological advancement in sustaining our valuable natural resources.

Waste: In order to eliminate waste, we maximize our sheet space by tilling up your job several times on a larger sheet of paper. Usually leaving only about 1/8 inch of paper scraps per sheet. Our paper scraps are then sent off to recycling facilities where they will come full circle and become particles in manufactured paper products that use percentages of post-consumer waste material in their production.

Indie Printing has been able to take advantage of alternative fuel vehicles. All of our local deliveries are done in a hybrid vehicle.