Greener Printing Options
Yesterday’s post examined some eco-friendly options for computer printing paper. Today I wanted to look and see about any greener options for a printers on the market.
As you probably know, the big companies making printers: Epson, HP, Canon, etc often sell their printers at cost or even below cost so you will be forced to use their proprietary ink cartridges sold at exorbitant prices. Refilling these cartridges yourself is one way to beat the system, and their are many solutions on the web in terms of good quality inks and refilling systems and kits. Echostore.com has a variety of options to refill your ink cartridges and seems reasonably priced.
If the thought of doing this all yourself seems too messy or worrisome then you might consider going to your nearest Walgreens, apparently they now have a program to refill your printer cartridges. Here is a link to more info. I found this information about walgreens at worstedwitch.com has a terrific post on ecological issues around print cartridges.
Naturally there is the common eco-sense stuff like only print when you really need to, print draft quality to save ink unless there is a clear reason not to, print both sides of the paper, reformat the print piece to use up less space (don’t print a 5 page item if all you really need is the address and phone number)
Beyond that, you might want to consider a new method of printing that is (tree-less) “photo paper”, called “Rock Paper” it uses a limestone based material. A fascinating article about this can be read at Treehugger.com here.
Xerox’s Phaser 8500/8550 Solid-Ink printer
For the printer itself, you naturally want an energy-star printer but one new model worth considering is Xerox’s Phaser 8500/8550 Solid-Ink printers. They use solid ink sticks with no casing - so no plastic packaging and cartridges to enter the landfill. Xerox claims that for every 100,000 printed pages, a solid ink printer generates approximately 5 lbs. of landfill waste, compared to approximately 157 lbs. for a typical color laser. They go on to claim that Solid ink printing generates 95% less waste during use than a typical color laser product. Additionally you can recycle solid ink printouts and you can use recycled paper for all your printing.
These printers are more expensive but if the ink sticks will last significantly longer than laser or ink cartridges it may offer a significant savings in the long run. These printers may be better suited for the small business user and someone who has a larger volume of printing.
