Beating The Iceberg Effect

Sydney Morning Herald

Tuesday February 28, 1995

BY SUE LOWE

KYOCERA has launched three more models of its Ecosys range of laser printers, including, for the first time, a personal printer at just over $1,000.

The Ecosys range has become renowned in the industry for its low running costs and the solution it offers to the environmental problems of spent toner cartridges. Ecosys printers all have special ceramic drums designed to last the life of the printer. Users only have to replace the toner, not the drum - hence saving a major part of the cost, not to mention landfill.

Clifford Smith, managing director of Kyocera Electronics, said laser printers are like icebergs: "Two thirds of the cost of a printer is not visible. People only see the top third, the purchase price." The invisible costs he says amount to several times the purchase price.

"Most laser printer manufacturers are not in the business of selling lasers, they're in the business of selling consumables," he said.

Over the past few years, Kyocera's claims have been endorsed by market researchers, only to be rejected by competitors and backed-up again by other researchers.

The Paper Industry Research Association (PIRA) in the United Kingdom was most recently called in to re-evaluate comparable 10-page-perminute printers from Kyocera and Hewlett-Packard after HP rejected earlier cost of ownership figures.

PIRA concluded: "The Kyocera FS1600 produces more than twice the number of copies per cartridge for refills than the HP Laserjet 4-Plus. Taking into account the initial cost of the machines, and the cost of consumables, the cost of ownership of the FS1600 is just over half that of the HP Laserjet 4-Plus." Smith quoted a per-page-printing cost of 2.8 cents for the new personal laser printer, the Ecosys FS-400. This compares to rival lasers costing 5 cents per page and above.

The higher volume, 18-page-per-minute FS-3600, also introduced last week, offers an even cheaper per page price of 1.35 cents.

The ceramic drums used in the faster 10 and 18 ppm Kyocera printers are guaranteed to last 300,000 pages. The personal FS-400 has a different, cheaper drum technology, but is still guaranteed for 100,000 pages. Both are designed for a typical five-year lifespan. Conventional laser printer drums only last 3,000 pages before needing replacement.

Although many laser printer manufacturers offer toner cartridge recycling programs, Smith estimates that less than 20 per cent of cartridges are recycled.

Sustainable Solutions, a research company based in Victoria, calculated that the average three-year environmental cost of a laser printer, printing 3,000 pages per month, would be 2.7 trees, 1.6 tonnes of greenhouse gas and 18 waste cartridges.

Based on figures from IDC that put the total number of laser printers used in Australia at about 226,000, it suggests 138,692 trees are consumed by printers every three years and 1,359,600 (minus at best 20 per cent) cartridges, thrown into landfill.