Saving money and trees
By Peter Lewis
It MAY seem oxymoronic to call computer printers "environmentally sensitive". Printers are voracious consumers of paper, and thus of trees.
An intriguing new computer printer developed by Kyocera Electronics claims to be environmentally sensitive, however, not because it uses less paper, but because it has no disposable parts
Conventional laser printers are built around an imaging engine that must be replaced after several thousand pages.
Although these plastic, ceramic and metal cartridges are intended to be recycled, most of them wind up in landfills.
The Kyocera Ecosys a-Si FS1500A printer, which will have a suggested list price of US$2,395 (S$7,210) when it becomes available in the United States next month, has a new type of ceramic print engine that purportedly will last the 300,000-page life of the printer.
Kyocera Electronics, a subsidiary of Japan’s Kyocera Corporation, says the new "amorphous silicon" engine has a life cycle equivalent to as many as 75 cartridge replacements on a conventional printer. As a result, it will send non-degradable cartridges to the dump.
For people for whom "green" has a more pragmatic meaning, Kyocera asserts that the Ecosys printer also saves money by reducing the average cost per page, to less than one cent as against about three cents for conventional laser printers.
Referring to the environmental issue, Mr. Rob Auster, printer analyst for BIS Strategic Decisions of the US, said: "I think this is something that the rest of the printer industry is going to have to deal with.
"Kyocera has put forward a value that users can understand. Their message is, ‘If you love the Earth, you’ll love our printer. No disposables, no polluting."
From a performance perspective, the Kyocera Ecosys a-Si FS1500A holds its own against rival printers. It is rated at 10 pages per minute, has 300-dots-per-inch resolution, comes with one megabyte of memory (expandable to 5 MB) and has an adequate selection of built-in fonts.
The printer takes up relatively little desk space and works quietly. It has a 250-page paper bin and optional bins for more paper and envelopes.
It is an LED printer, meaning it uses light-emitting diodes instead of lasers and mirrors to produce images. The technologies are different, but the results are essentially the same.
In short, the Kyocera Ecosys a-Si FS1500A appears to match the features of its competitors, but with the promised advantages of low operation cost and low environmental impact.
Other printer manufacturers are getting into the act too.
Canon USA is the leading provider of imaging engines for laser printers, including HP Laserjets and Apple Laserwriters.
Since May 1990, Canon has included a pre-addressed, postage-paid mailing label with each replacement cartridge.
When the cartridge is spent, the user puts it back in its box, slaps on the label and sends it to Canon. Canon, in turn, ships the cartridge to a recycling plant in China.
A spokesman for Canon said nearly 750,000 cartridges had been recycled in the US since 1990. However, Mr Auster estimated that eight million cartridges are sold each year, which suggests that fewer than 10 per cent are returned.
Another 15 to 20 per cent of the cartridges are taken to independent companies for refilling, Auster speculated.
Refillers replace the toner particles, the black dust that functions as ink in a laser printer. The practical advantage is that refilling a cartridge costs about half as much as buying a new one, about US$40 as against US$75 to US$100.
Refilling usually does not replace the ceramic printing drum in the cartridge, though, so it merely postpones, rather than eliminates, the cartridge’s eventual journey to the dump.
A cartridge can be refilled several times, but eventually the drum wears down and gets scratched, resulting in degraded print quality.
Kyocera plans to get around the problem by using a special "Ecotone" toner mixture that includes microscopic ceramic particles.
The particles continuously clean and polish the drum, extending its useful life. The Ecotone mixture (in a recycled package, of course) must be replenished after 5,000 pages.
Spending more and using less
FOR many years, I resisted buying a printer because I hated the idea of killing trees.
This year, I succumbed. But laden with guilt, I decided to try and save paper by buying expensive paper - I figured that if I was somehow conscious about the financial and environmental cost of each page, I would print less — in some ways, this has worked.
But laser and desktop publishing technology make the generation of paper even more convenient.
Seduced by the apparent ease and quality of what can be printed, you actually waste more paper.
Instead of reducing the amount of paper-flow in the world, information technology increases it.
Well, as socially and environmentally conscious citizens, you should try to think about this every time you print something on your computer.
Here are some tips:
Paper and materials
• Print on both sides of the paper. This is easy. Place the paper the other way round and upside down in the tray.
Experiment and figure out how the paper feed mechanism works.
Double-sided printouts look more impressive and professional in most cases.
Some wordprocessing programs allow you to print manually, one page at at time, and others allow for double-sided printing by printing the even pages first.
• Buy recycled paper. Recycled paper costs a little more now, but that is because the worldwide demand for it is low.
By using such paper, you can change that. Recycled paper in various sizes is available from the RJ Paper Company (Tel: 743-3102).
• Re-use and recycle your computer printouts. Formfeed paper is excellent for recycling.
Put all the printouts in a separate section for disposal.
You should be able to find a karang guni (rag-and-bone) man in your neighbourhood who will buy it. Ask around for recycling disposal centres nearby.
• A lot of paper is wasted in rough drafts and test runs. Commit less to paper. Get into the habit of seeing everything on screen before you print.
If you are a programmer, try to debug programmes on screen instead of listing them out on paper. Isolate the problem and print out only the sections that have the suspected bug.
• Try to save and re-use the packaging material that comes with your computer and accessories.
Styrofoam is a typically "environmentally-unfriendly" product.
It takes over 500 years to decompose in landfills. Save it, and find another use for it.
Good information habits
• Stop junk mail and ignore brochures. A lot of junk mail is not even read. Stop this by writing or complaining to the people who send them.
Computer trade shows generate a lot of paper, so collect few brochures. Be discerning about what you collect. Do not be a victim of information anxiety.
A lot of information is just noise. How many brochures can you read anyway? And how many are relevant to your work and life?
Spend a few minutes to examine your information needs. It saves time and trees.
• Do things electronically if possible. Before you get into your car to go somewhere, before arranging a meeting, think twice — can you do it over the phone or fax?
Information technology is supposed to save time, augment productivity and facilitate communication.
If you have bothered to read this far, then you care about the environment. There is more that you can do.
Take time out to learn more about these issues and then, more importantly, share it with friends and colleagues. Spread the word and convert people, one person at a time.
For more information, contact the Jalan Hijau Group of the Malayan Nature Society — 7, Asimont Lane #01-04, Singapore 1130. Tel/Fax: 253-2179.
Jek Kian Jin is a software consultant for the National Computer Board.
Source : The Straits Times, May 26,1992
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