How to Be an Eco-Friendly Artist
With these insights, it’s possible for artists to be a little greener (so to speak) at the end of the day.
By Daniel Grant
Many artists want to be good stewards of the planet. They strive to limit their carbon footprint by using thoughtful processes and environmentally conscious art supplies. The problem? It’s far easier to find the buzzwords — like natural, organic, Fair Trade, and eco-friendly — than it is to find professional-quality “responsibly sourced” art supplies that will allow artists to live up to their ideals while maintaining their studio practice.
What’s in a Name?
Artists are seeing more and more promotion of products marketed as environmentally aware. Terms such as eco-friendly, environmentally safe, and green have no generally recognized meaning and really are marketing language. Other labels may seem to have strict definitions yet hide more than they reveal. As an example, the description for the solvent Eco-Solve can be confusing, as the manufacturer describes it with phrases like:
- it has a “subtle, fruity licorice scent”
- the product “does not irritate the skin” or “emit harmful vapors”
- it is “soy-based and vegan … cruelty-free”
The description sounds as though one can proceed with little to worry about in terms of health or the environment. However, when one examines the Material Data Safety Sheet for Eco-Solve and scrolls to Section 8, one finds the following instructions. “Provide adequate general and local exhaust ventilation. Use process enclosures, local exhaust ventilation, or other engineering controls to control airborne levels below recommended exposure limits.” In terms of safely disposing of Eco-Solve, one reads, “Do not discharge to public wastewater systems without permit of pollution control authorities.”
You cannot say that you weren’t warned, but it requires effort on the part of artists to get beyond the advertising language.
Seeking Definitions
Some distinctions — like Fair Trade Certified, for example — have clearly defined standards the product has met. One can easily find these parameters through a simple Google search. When it comes to nebulous marketing lingo, it helps if the company defines their use of the term in question. For instance, Jerry’s Artarama, a nationwide distributor of art supplies, places a logo next to what it calls “green products.”
The company defines green products as items that:
- are environmentally and socially friendly because of the way they are formulated, manufactured, or packaged
- use materials that are relatively benign in their ‘extraction’ phase, such as: reused, recycled, renewable, organic, etc.
- are less wasteful and less toxic than mainstream products
- are safe to humans, animals, and the environment
Eco-Friendly Manufacturing Practices
Many artists aim to find manufacturers of art supplies who use eco-friendly practices, and there are many out there.
Natural Ingredients
The Vancouver, Canada-based Eartheasy.com sells watercolor paints composed of plant dyes mixed with a beeswax and aluminum oxide. (The company says this is “as non-toxic as you can get”). They also sell eco-friendly watercolor pencils “made with re-forested wood, or wood that has come from forestry that replants a tree for each one cut down.”
M. Graham & Co., the West Linn, Oregon-based producer of artist paints, uses walnut oil as a binder in almost all of its paints. Walnut oil eliminates the need for solvents when cleaning the brushes. According to Judy Rebitzke, the company’s business operations manager, “walnut oil makes the paint slide off the bristles of the brush,” while solvents dissolve paint and are known carcinogens.
Recycled Packaging
Other art supply manufacturers tout their own environmentally conscious production and shipping practices. The Ashland, Oregon-based Natural Earth Paint, for example, claims to use locally made, 100 percent post-consumer recycled packaging, biodegradable plastic bags, and recyclable glass bottles. They also add that it operates in a 100 percent solar-powered facility.
Alternative Energy Sources
Golden Artist Colors in New Berlin, New York, purchases “100 percent ‘clean’ electricity generated entirely from wind and low-impact hydro sources, which definitely resulted in a smaller carbon footprint for our paints,” according to a spokesman. He adds, “Since 1992, we have recycled thousands of gallons of latex house paint collected from annual local-household hazardous-waste collection days as a free service to our local communities.” They also source raw materials only from companies with no “environmental violations or less than state-of-the-art pollution control practices.”
Less Water Usage
Best environmental practices at Winsor & Newton include processing and reusing water, rather than “simply using water and releasing it into drains.” Additionally, at its brush-making plant in the United Kingdom, the company has introduced a rainwater collection system that provides a free, alternative source of water for the production process and enables them to cut freshwater consumption.
Do No (Artist) Harm
Manufacturers’ move to be more eco-friendly follows the industry’s efforts to produce materials that are less harmful to artists themselves. Many products whose ingredients include heavy metals, such as cadmium, cobalt, or lead, have been reformulated with laboratory-produced substitutes that lessen the potential harm. Some colors are no longer offered to artists. These colors include vermilion (mercuric sulfide), manganese blue (barium manganate), or genuine emerald green made from an arsenic compound.
Utrecht, a seller of artist materials, offers both traditional cadmium paints and a separate line of “cad-free” colors. The cad-free pigments are composed of “complex organic blends,” according to the company’s artist-in-residence Joe Gyurcsak. Cad-free has the same opacity as well as the same feel and weight as the traditional product, Gyurcsak claims. However, the specific added ingredients to the cad-free paints that offer that same feel are proprietary. They have not necessarily been tested for toxicity, which makes the health benefits of the substitutes a little less meaningful.
The Source of Pigments
Perhaps that should not come as a surprise. “The source of pigments is one of the few proprietary issues that manufacturers guard carefully,” and the question of how and where these substances are extracted “is rarely raised by artists,” says Michael Skalka, chair of the artists’ materials subcommittee at American Society for Testing and Materials.
Skalka notes that producers of artist materials have little sway over the chemical companies that take raw materials and make them into pigments that are used in many artist paints. “Large industries like automobile manufacturers and the commercial paint industry form the foundation for the pigments that are created by industries fabricating colorants,” he says. “When Ford or GM order pigments for the cars they will paint, the quantities are in the thousands of pounds. When an art materials manufacturer orders pigments, the total order might be 50 to 150 pounds of pigment. Art material manufacturers have no influence on what colors chemical companies make and in what quantities they are produced, let alone lending a voice to how responsible the chemical company is about how the pigment is made.”
At Your Disposal
In large measure, the choices for artists concerned about environmental impact are less the products they purchase and more how they dispose of their wastes. Paint scrapings and painted-on papers and canvases, for instance, usually contain toxic elements that should not be part of regular trash disposal. And the solvents or other liquids used to clean brushes should not be poured down the drain. Instead, they all should be stored and removed per the guidelines of local hazardous waste removal ordinances.
One recommended technique is to evaporate a solvent by putting it outside in the sun. This practice is not great for air quality but poses limited risks when the amount of liquid is relatively small, leaving behind a solid “cake” of pigments. Once the solvent has evaporated and the oils have become set, they become inert, although they still may be considered harmful. Landfills will accept solid artists’ wastes as long as they are not toxic. If an artist is working with products that are labeled hazardous, these should be segregated for disposal as hazardous wastes. Not recommended is burning canvases outdoors, which releases fumes into the air. Burning canvases also doesn’t completely carbonize the solid material, allowing it to seep into the ground water supply.
Artists cannot buy their way to sustainability nor completely sidestep the health and environmental implications of their medium and practice. But with these insights, it’s possible for artists to be a little more eco-friendly at the end of the day.
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