Carbon Footprint - Application in Graphic Art Technology

The need for more sustainable products and processes has triggered the develop-ment of a large number of environmental assessment tools. These tools measure environmental performance and identify improvement potentials from the envi-ronmental point of view. The life cycle assessment (lca) methods take into ac-count all effects on the environment, direct and indirect resource inputs and/or emissions during the whole life cycle of products. The carbon footprint is a sub-set of data covered by life cycle assessment.The aim of this paper is to describe the potential environmental impacts (green-house gases, carbon footprint) of printed paper and new media.