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Another paper-saving product yet to see the light of day is Xerox's
erasable paper. Xerox has taken a different tack to Toshiba and the
University of Cambridge, by developing re-usable paper that erases
itself after a certain period of time. Suitable for ‘daily use’ documents
printed for a single viewing, which Xerox says account for two out of
every five pages printed in the office, erasable paper uses compounds
that change colour when they absorb a certain wavelength of light
and then gradually disappear. The version unveiled by Xerox in 2008
self-erases after 16-24 hours.
PRINT.IT
21
www.binfo.co.uk
Erasable Toner
When it comes to printing,
office workers have taken the
‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ mantra
to heart, often for financial
rather than environmental
reasons.
According to the Kyocera Mita
Environmental Survey 2011,
the average number of pages
printed by an office worker fell by
40% between 2010 and 2011,
from 10,000 pages a year to
6,000. Meanwhile organisations
continue to recycle their waste
paper: the recycling rate in
Western Europe is now 70% and
must be nearing its ceiling.
The area where office workers
have been less successful is
paper ‘re-use’. Yes, you can make
litter for guinea pigs or turn waste
paper into notepads (harder to
do now that people print on both
sides of the page), but this hardly
qualifies as productive re-use.
What’s needed is a way to erase
pages so that they can be printed
again and again.
Printer manufacturers have
been working on this concept
for 15 years or more without
success. Until last month, when
Toshiba unveiled an erasable
toner system to be launched in
the winter of 2012/13. A video
report by Digitized Information
Inc. (www.diginfo.tv) shows the
system in action, from which it
is possible to draw the following
conclusions:
n
The system requires specially
developed erasable toner and
a purpose-built MFP, but works
Print, erase, print,
erase, print...
with normal copier paper.
n
Erasable toner is currently only
available in blue, but Toshiba
plans to launch other colours
in the future, as well as a
colour version of the MFP.
n
Toner is erased using heat,
which also removes notes
made with a Pilot Frixion
erasable pen. Other ink and
pencil marks are not removed.
n
A sheet can be erased five
times.
n
The process de-colours the
toner, rather than erasing it
completely. Because a ghost
of the original text can remain,
the system isn’t suitable for
sensitive material.
n
The erasing unit is currently
a separate unit, but the plan
is to integrate it fully into the
MFP.
n
A scanner within the erasing
unit digitises and archives
pages before they are erased.
n
Erased pages are
automatically sorted into those
that can be re-used and those
with pen marks that will need
to be recycled.
This is an exciting development,
but there are still questions
around pricing, energy
consumption and the practicality
of such a system in an office
environment that Toshiba will
need to address if its solution is
to become an office staple.
There is also the risk that
alternative systems could make
it redundant.
Laser removal
New research from the University
of Cambridge, also released last
month, proves it is possible to
remove normal HP LaserJet toner
from Canon copier paper without
damaging it in any way.
The purpose of the study
led by Dr Julian Allwood, Leader
of the Low Carbon Materials
Processing Group at the
University, was to see if there was
an energy-efficient alternative to
recycling for paper re-use. After
considering options for removing,
obscuring or decolouring text,
his team focused on applications
of laser technology. “Initial tests
showed that we could heat toner
to the point where it vaporises,
but that doing so aged the paper
leaving a perfect yellow print of
the line removed,” explained
Dr Allwood.
However, further trials found
that in certain combinations
toner could be vaporised without
damaging or marking the paper,
potentially allowing a sheet to be
re-used five times. Particles from
the vaporised toner are filtered
so that the surrounding air stays
clean.
The study found that toner
removal and paper re-use
eliminated four steps from the
paper production cycle – forestry,
pulping, paper making and
disposal by incineration or landfill
– resulting in a 95% reduction
in emissions compared to the
production of one tonne of office
paper. Recycling has a 76%
reduction in emissions.
Dr Allwood told
PrintIT
that
when economies of scale
are taken into account the
advantages over recycling could
be even greater. “We were using a
developmental laser not designed
for efficiency. We’ve made an
estimate that this could save
half the emissions created by
recycling paper, but that depends
on a raft of elements,” he said.
Dr Allwood’s concept is
not as advanced as Toshiba’s
– he is currently looking for
a manufacturer to create a
prototype – but it does have
one big advantage: it works with
the most widely used toner and
standard paper. “If you lock the
user into a specific paper or
toner, you make life easier for
yourself. But that limits the supply
of material you can feed in. Our
hope was to generalise this to all
paper and toner,” he said.
Could 2013 be the year of erasable toner?
James Goulding reports
Going, going,
gone?
One of only two working
prototypes of Toshiba’s toner
eraser seen in action at News
International’s London offices.
Used paper goes in the top and
clean paper comes out
the bottom.