Tackling A New Era Of Green Printing

Sydney Morning Herald

Sunday October 10, 1993

DIANA SIMICEVIC

EVER noticed how the bin next to an office photocopier or printer is always full? How those mistakes, revisions and extra copies not only waste paper but toner, cartridge and energy as well?

In the past 10 years, an estimated 300 million cartridges have been relegated to land fills and garbage dumps.

As the drums used by laser printers to transfer toner on to paper need to be replaced every 4,000 to 6,000 copies, the computer industry is trying to reduce the number of cartridges thrown away.

Kyocera is at the forefront of green printing with the launching of its ECOSYS range last year. The drum in these printers has been coated with amorphous silicon that should last the lifetime of the machine. The only consumable required is the replacement toner.

Another environmental advantage is that the rougher, 100 per cent recycled paper can also be used in the printer without damaging the drum.

Kyocera's Australian managing director, Cliff Smith, says the company is committed to green technology, with a philosophy of prevention rather than cure.

"Instead of adding to the millions of non-biodegradable cartridges each year, our solution is not to create the waste in the first place," he said.

"The day of the cartridge has come and gone because every time you need to refuel your printer you have to throw away the engine."

Other companies like Hewlett-Packard and Canon, which still use the short-life organic photo-conductive drums, have introduced recycling programs, instead.

Hewlett-Packard returns its printer drums to an offshore factory, which recycles the plastic casing and aluminium, reducing the number of cartridges thrown away to less than 3 per cent. The hard wearing screws and metal components are melted down and reused.

There are no local figures available, but in Britain only 2 per cent of Hewlett-Packard customers return their spent cartridges to the manufacturer. But with one of the largest segments of the printer market, HP can boast efficiencies in other areas like energy consumption and emission of ozone - a highly toxic gas which causes headaches, nausea, throat irritations and dermatitis.

Hewlett-Packard's Deskjet 500 printer needs just eight watts of power when idle and 25 watts when in use, compared with the kilowatt used by some laser printers. The ink used by the Deskjet is also supposed to to be easier to remove from the hardcopy during the paper recycling process.

Canon's recycling program collected almost 13,000 cartridges last year, with every return earning a $1 donation to Earthwatch Australia. Since the beginning of the Clean Earth program in 1990, almost 2 million cartridges have been returned to Canon worldwide, which is less than 10 per cent of the company's total number of cartridge sales. Imagine the landfill needed for the other 90 per cent that ended up in the office bin.

Research has also confirmed that green printers are cheaper to run than traditional printers, when the cost of consumables is considered. The Thin Green Line report, published by the International Research Bureau (IRB), found the cost savings of environmentally friendly products were significantly higher than non-green printers.

Over four years, IRB calculated the cost of consumables can add more than twice the original purchase price to the printer.

In a comparison of three laser printers scaled according to their level of ecological sensitivity, the report concluded that the greenest one cost$11,666 to run over four years while the least green printer cost $21,580 over the same period.

German ordinances require the manufacturer to accept responsibility for the disposal of all packaging used to deliver the goods, and Kyocera says all countries will eventually follow suit.

In Germany, Kyocera collects the box from the customer and returns it to the warehouse, sometimes for reuse but more typically for recycling. New legislation mooted for the new year will require manufacturers to label each part of the machine according to the recycling process it will require when disposed.

The onus is on companies to take responsibility for their products from cradle to grave.