Storage of Documents as a Function of Sustainability

Abstract

Sustainability is a premise that has been implemented in all technologies, industries, and service activities to have as little impact on the environment as possible. Typography as a profession made its contribution by creating eco fonts. In each country, the law regulates the lifespan of the storage of everyday business documents. One of the ways to reduce the impact on the environment is to reduce the consumption of ink, which can be achieved by printing the document with more sustainable fonts. By using the mentioned fonts when creating documents, the user should not notice a visual difference, and the document should have the same level of readability. Earlier research on ecological standards was only related to the environmental acceptability of materials, i.e., inks or printing substrates. Using eco fonts, each ink can have a reduced environmental impact. The more environmentally friendly fonts, Ryman Eco and Ecofont Sans, were tested in this experiment. Arial as a standard sans serif font and Times New Roman as a standard serif font were used as reference fonts. In the research, coverage data of different document samples created with different types of typeface and spacing are interpreted to investigate the possibility of saving ink. As eco fonts have been used since the end of the previous and beginning of this century, some stored documents are certainly ready for waste management, which is almost always recycled. By recycling document samples, the optical characteristics of laboratory paper sheets obtained by chemical deinking flotation were investigated. Another aim of the investigation is to provide insight into the quality of recycled fibres after the recycling process.