The comparison of environmental impacts between rotary screen and digital reactive printing by life cycle assessment

Rotary screen printing is one of the most widely used printing technology in textile printing sector. In the world textile market, 60% of printed fabrics are printed with rotary screen printing technology. In rotary screen printing technology, printing and drying processes are continuous and printing speed is higher than other technologies. In recent years, textile digital printing technology that eliminates screens from printing process is becoming increasingly widespread. During the digital printing process, the patterns are produced directly on the fabric. In this study, rotary screen and digital printing technologies were compared with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). As a result of the comparison, it was seen that the environmental impact, energy and water consumption increased according to the number of colors in rotary screen printing technology, while there was no significant change in digital printing according to the number of colors. Depending on the number of colors, digital printing is more environmentally friendly than rotation printing. But rotation printing is more advantageous in natural gas and electricity consumption than digital printing.