Here we have another concept eco-printer, the REENK by Hyo Sun Ahn & Min Koung So. Similar to the Pencil lead printer, the REENK uses the leftover ink from ballpoint pens after they stop working. The only flaws I can see with this design is that you would probably have to buy specific CMYK pens that would probably be more expensive than your avarage ballpoint pen, and when have you ever used a yellow pen? The concept is still a great one though.
This handmade epson ink cartridge lamp is made from just that, and it looks wierdly cool. Its fairly expensive if you want one at $200, but so are the cartridges that its made from. Its the second best thing you can do with your empty ink cartridges, the first being sending them in to us to recycle.
Here’s another eco-friendly printer, and like the pencil printer it doesn’t use a conventional ink. Instead it uses used ground coffee to print its documents, you just pour used coffee grounds into the printers’ cartridge and then move the cartridge from side to side till your document has printed. So basically your doing quite a lot of the printing work for it, but this whole concept has no need for a power source or ink cartridges, so it really is eco-friendly.
There are alot of eco-printer concepts about lately and the Pencil Printer is one of the most innotive ones I’ve seen so far.
The Pencil Printer by Hoyoung Lee may only be a concept but it’s a great idea. It grounds down pencil stubs to create a fine lead powder similar to the powder used in toner cartridges. Aswell as printing it can also erase in the proccess if you have made any mistakes within the documen. It’s a great concept for anyone who wants to print of documents that would need to be edited alot but is also eco-friendly.
If only the big companies would sponser some of these eco-friendly concepts.
Lets face it, the current printer technology we all use on a daily basis is old. Printer ink and toner cartridges have been around for ages, surely something new and more eco-friendly must be on the way. Well printer technology has still been advancing even though the advances don’t seem to be effecting the mainstream for example ink-less and toner-less printers do exist, but are either to expensive or just not available to the public. Most of these “advances” seem to be aimed towards making a more eco-friendly printer, such as the PrePeat printer.
The PrePeat printer doesn’t use ink or toner, instead it uses a special thermal head to print. The thing that makes this printer even more eco-friendly is that it can recycle paper. You can put in a piece of paper that already has something printed on it, and the printer erases it using the thermal head and prints straight back on to the paper.
This all sounds great, looks like we might be out of business selling ink and toner cartridges…
Or maybe not, the printer isn’t really as perfect as it may seem. The main downfall is that the printer only uses a special type of plastic paper, this paper only comes in reams of 1000 sheets and costing around £2.12 a sheet it’s not the cheapest way to save the planet. The printer itself costs over £3500 and although you can use a sheet of the plastic paper up to 1000 times, I still don’t think it’s the answer to our eco-printing problems… yet.
Think of your pocket! Most Hp ink cartridges are worth money as an empty. You could cash them in through our HP ink cartridge recycling scheme. Donate the money to charity or have the cash back against your next order or to save for life’s little extra’s.
Think Conservation! It takes more than 90mls of oil when producing an average hp ink cartridge. For every cartridge that has been recycled it means that one less new cartridge has been sold, less sales means less production which means less oil being used!
Think of the Environment! Hp printer cartridges are made of plastics and metals that will take 100’s of years to decompose when buried in landfill sites, that’s if they decompose at all. These days we are more than aware that land filling Hp ink cartridges is not a good idea at all.
Other reasons to recycle your printer cartridges….
