Navigating California’s environmental regulations

Those doing business in California often bemoan the state’s environmental regulation as being overly burdensome.

For example, Prop 65 requires businesses to list on a warning label all of a product’s materials that contain possible carcinogenic chemicals. The 1986 law was designed to protect California’s drinking water from contamination, but critics of Prop 65 say the law has lacked proper review, causing the list of chemicals to balloon to well over 800 substances. ‘Chemicals could land on Proposition 65’s blacklist without scientists ever demonstrating that they cause adverse health effects in humans,’ reads an editorial in the Fresno Bee newspaper.

Further, the American Cancer Society says ‘not every compound labeled as a possible cancer-causing substance has been proven to the worldwide scientific community to actually cause cancer.’

Ink manufacturer Flexo-Technologies knows Prop 65 all too well, given the chemicals that make up its ink and the products to clean it.

‘It’s a legislative nightmare out here,’ said Doug Nelson, from California ink manufacturer Flexo-Technologies.

Flexo-Technologies is a private­ly-owned, regional ink manufacturer based in South El Monte, California. The company manufactures water-based inks, coatings and adhesives for a variety of applications in in the paper converting and printing industries. Flexo-Technologies customers are based in West Coast states such as Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Arizona and Nevada.

Flexo-Technologies primarily has been active in the corrugated and paper bag market, but most recently has moved into the narrow web flexographic market, and brought Nelson on as VP of its narrow web division. The 9m USD company does about 2m USD in sales to the narrow web industry.

In addition to selling water-based inks to narrow web customers, Flexo-Technologies wanted to sell the products that clean it. Flexo-Technol­ogies needed something that would comply with California’s environmental regulations, such as Prop 65, and other laws requiring cleaning product to be free of alcohols and acetates that are commonly found in ink cleaning products.

‘Being that we want to be a total solution provider, we wanted to sell cleaning products also,’ Nelson said. ‘These products go hand in hand for us.’

Low VOC

It was in Bradley Systems’ Yellow Magic cleaner, that Flexo-Technologies found a nontoxic, environmentally-safe product. Flexo-Technologies is the West Coast distributor of Yellow Magic.

Yellow Magic has a low volatile organic compound (VOC) content, which was attractive in California’s regulatory climate. There are only 10.25 pounds of VOCs in a 55-gallon drum of Yellow Magic, compared to 280-320 pounds in a regular cleaner, Bradley Systems says. Once filtered through a 50-micron screen, Yellow Magic can be disposed of with the regular trash, as opposed to HazMat disposal, Bradley Systems says.

Furthermore, Yellow Magic is strong enough to clean both water-based and UV inks.

‘For us, the biggest benefits are that it’s low VOC, and it works on both water-based and UV curable flexographic printing inks,’ Nelson said. ‘One product that can clean both UV and water based inks is very rare. Their product does really well in both.’

In addition to meeting regulatory standards, Flexo-Technologies went a step further. To save on heavy freight costs of shipping Yellow Magic from Bradley Systems’ headquarters in Chicago to Flexo-Technologies in California, the ink manufacturer signed up for what Bradley Systems calls its ‘Enviro-Ship Program.’

Instead of shipping a 55-gallon drums of product, through the ‘Enviro-Ship’ program, Flexo-Technologies is sent concentrated product that is diluted before selling to a customer, or the customer can dilute it themselves. These refill kits save on expensive shipping costs. The refills have saved Flexo-Technologies has saved 22,236 USD since starting the program in 2014, the ink company says.

‘I’m saving a bloody fortune on freight,’ Nelson said, laughing. ‘And so are my customers.’