DIG IS GOING GREEN No - it's not that the RPS Digital Imaging Group members' images are being given a cyan colour cast, but that we have decided this is a good time to invest in the environment. Our quarterly flagship magazine DIGIT has a distribution of 1700+ copies to DIG members, each copy wrapped in the ubiquitous non-degradable plastic outer sleeve. When our printers, Henry Lings of Dorchester, recently offered us the opportunity of a bio degradable sleeve, we wanted to know more. Potato starch is the foundation for this new plastic wrapping, but it seems possible to make all sorts of other extrusions from it. The recipe for production reads more like preparing a meal than producing an industrial product. They wash, grate, decant, sift, and refine the starch to produce the starch milk from which comes the ‘new’ plastic.
But the really great thing about this product is that it is fully bio-degradable and can be thrown away with food and garden waste. You can add it to your compost pile or pop it in the green bin. safe, in the knowledge that, in about 35 days, it will be more or less totally back to nature.
DIG will be marking our postal address insert sheet to remind members how the outer should be disposed of and where. When the idea was put to the DIG Committee that we should embrace this new product, despite a slight increase in cost, they unanimously agreed it was the way to go. From December 2018 DIGIT will therefore be ‘going green’.