The printed environment
It is forty years since the term "paperless office" was coined, and that was long before the world wide web. It also predates inkjets, desktop lasers, home scanners and digital cameras.
The web has changed our relationship with information, but we still use paper. Admittedly newsprint and glossy magazines are in decline, email has made fax and telex machines obsolete, plastic has replaced the cheque, and to some extent we have electronic replacements for the monthly utility bills, bank statements, tax disks and MOT certificates. Those bulky and confusing user manuals for gadgets are still just as confusing but nowadays they are confusing PDFs which must be downloaded from websites. In other areas though there has been a significant growth in paper usage since the prediction of a tree-saving paperless future.
Reductions in print costs makes it more viable for businesses to produce business cards, security passes, leaflets, and brochures. Never in our wildest dreams did we think of home printers capable of printing A4 size high quality glossy photos for a cost measured in pence, or that we could economically print our designs onto Christmas cards and personalised calendars. Maybe the biggest unforseen increase in paper comes with the explosion of online shopping, where retailers need to print address labels and include packing notes and invoices with orders.
Ink jet printers are fantastically good, amazingly affordable, but the ink refills can be prohibitively expensive. Sometimes it be can be cheaper to buy a new printer than it is to buy a new set of cartridges, and that is bad for the environment. Many designs are quite wasteful, with the cost of manufacturing the plastic enclosure exceeding that of the ink inside them, and many of those cartridges end up in landfill.
Epson has addressed this problem with its Ecotank system. In printers fitted with ecotanks, each ink reservoir has an easy-to-remove cap, designed so you can top it up at any time. Epson includes a generous supply of refill ink with the printer, and sells the various inks in 70ml resealable bottles for about £10 per bottle. Compare that with the manufacturer-branded sealed cartridges used in many cheap desktop printers where buying even the largest and most economical size of cartridge works out at about £50 for 70ml of ink. That's a huge saving on running costs, and a lot less wasted material heading to landfill. Its good for consumers and good for the environment. Reviewers report that refilling the ecotanks can still be a little messy, but its definitely a move in the right direction and one which others will hopefully follow.
Fact: It is estimated that US offices use 12.1 trillion sheets of paper per year, and produce enough paper waste to build a twelve foot high wall along the entire length of the southern border.
26th January 2017
This article comes from the SKILLZONE email newsletter, published monthly since January 2008, and covering topics related to technology and the internet. All articles and artwork in the SKILLZONE newsletter are orignal content.