In the spirit of the environmental movement, which has had a motto of the three R’s - Reduce Re-use Recycle, we have instituted a “Recycled Ink” program at Mirror Image. We have inks that were mixed in error, over bought (boo hoo, the Patriots lost!) over mixed, mixed or programs that were unexpectedly cancelled, etc.

These inks were going to be carted away and I think in this area they burn them in cement kilns. Plastisol is not ideally used for a fuel, ideally it is used for it’s intended purpose. However, after sitting on the shelf sometimes for ten years, you just can’t keep it around.

What we have done is combined similar colors and made a list of these inks for customers to pick from. Unlike most of our more environmental ink, we don’t charge more for these inks, we charge less. Make your design work with these colors and we save them from the waste stream.

Recycled inks, our current color listings.

 Is this the screenprinting ecological panacea we have all been looking for? No, indeed it is not. In fact, best practices are to only mix what you need, be careful what you mix, and don’t make mistakes on colors. Ideally more ecological inks are used.  However, for the times things don’t work that way and for the way printing is currently done, this is a creative and responsible way to deal with the problem. 

If you use these “recycled” inks you aren’t buying some other ink and that is the “Reduce” part of the 3 R’s. You obviously are doing the “Re-use” part of the three R’s. In the usual way of using the term “Recycling” you are not sending the ink to be made into something else, but in another sense of that word you are “cycling” it back into use  rather than diverting it to being waste.