Most of us have a printer that, of course, uses cartridges to print. No big deal. Sooner or later, those cartridges get empty and utilized. This is amazing, but with current level of environment care and protection, most printer cartridges end up in landfill. The share of cartridges that are recycled or reused in a way, don’t even reach 50%, according to a new research done by InfoTrends.

The notorious “razor and blades” business model of printer makers suggests selling cheap hardware and making up on printer supplies. That has little to do with supporting environmental goals, since such approach generates more and more new toner and cartridges. On the other hand, original equipment manufacturers prohibit third parties re-manufacturers in every way from collecting, re-filling and recycling cartridges.

According to the InfoTrends research, gigantic amount of printer cartridges are used daily, and both original and third party manufacturers are eager to collect the largest amount of empty cartridges possible. The two sides have different way of dealing with collected cartridges: OEMs recycle them; broking down into component materials, while the re-manufacturers refill and resell cartridges, at lower prices.

The research says, re-manufacturers are more effective at gathering empty cartridges:

Third-party party supplies companies collect 70% more empty OEM toner cartridges and 700% more empty OEM inkjet cartridges than the OEMs themselves.

Original manufacturers seem to be using recycling as a way to keep used cartridges away from being remanufactured by third-party companies, who would then sell them cheaper, thus reducing OEM’s profit. This is also reflected in the research:

Through remanufacturing, 3rd party supplies companies are able, on average, to reduce overall demand for new cartridges by about 20%.

Another thing that make reuse of printer cartridges harder is a vast diversity of cartridge shapes and sizes. Should there be several standard types and sizes of cartridges, like with soda bottles, reuse will be a lot easier. Besides, cartridges a re simply not designed for reuse, because every following cycle of use reduces the possibility of making profit on the printer cartridge. This statement finds the support in the research:

80 percent of re-manufactured toner cartridges and 86 percent of re-manufactured inkjet cartridges are thrown away’ because it is uneconomic to refill them again.

Moreover, both OEMs and third party re-manufacturers are not “designed” yet to reuse printer cartridges:

Transparent and public reporting of environmental performance was not available from several OEMs or any of the re-manufacturers surveyed.

Those who support environment protection unlikely to see the situation changing until printer makers shift to other business model and start to design printer cartridges for reuse.

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Printer makers aggressively advertise and market the printing devices they produce. It is a common sight when an inkjet printer sells for pennies, even in the red. Prices for laser printers and copiers are constantly dropping too, making the devices more affordable to increasing number of customers. Obviously, this is supposed to create a favorable environment for digital printing at home.

However, a survey shows that among 7.7 billion of digitally printed materials such as brochures, postcards, business cards, etc. in 2007, only 48% are produced at home. Compared to last year’s 64%, this is a substantial decrease. Surprising, isn’t it?

The decrease in home printing, in turn, caused printer manufacturers to drop price up to 30% on personal printers to make them more appealing to customers. Printer manufacturers are doing a great job convincing consumers to try printing their materials at home.

If you are a printer owner, you, probably, know that consumables cost can easily pull out the money you saved on printer. Inks and cartridges can match the price of good wine; photo paper prices easily catch up those of securities at NY Stock Exchange. All this makes home-based printing something distant from being cost-effective.

Ultimately, the increase in digital photo printing does not seem large enough for printer manufacturers to rest assured. It is a fact that although consumers are biased towards using their digital cameras, pictures are now often shared via the internet, instead of being printed.

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Have you lived long enoigh to remember how roller printer looked like? Now forget it, because here comes a roller printer you’ve never seen before!

Jin Woo Han, a product designer from South Korea, realized his vision of a roller printer. The device is capable of printing on extremely long lengths of paper, so you can make banner and panoramic pictures at home. The printer has a built-in cutter to produce regular sized (A4 and A3) pages.

The printer exist only as as 3-d concept model and not available anywhere, but when and if released as a commercial product, it would be a gadget attractive enough to compete with iPods and iPhones. See for youself:

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If you considered yourself a happy owner of a color laser printer, you probably won’t be so happy any longer.

In 2005 Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization supporting customers’ freedoms in the world of electronics, made a discovery that didn’t have much publicity. Every document printed on most color laser printers includes a set of yellow dots used to identify the printer. These dots are invisible to naked eye, but can be clearly seen under microscope or intense blue light.

The dots make up a pattern unique to each printer, so it’s possible to identify the serial number, make and model of printer. Given that most of color laser printers sell directly from the manufacturer or through well-documented service providers, it becomes easy to track the owner of printer. So, everything you print can, and pretty much will, be used against you.

Why on earth, something like this would happen? One of the reasons why might be an agreement of US government and most printer manufacturers to help track down currency counterfeiters. Technological advancement of printing and photocopying devices made it easier to forge money, and with the yellow marks the counterfeit can be tracked back to its origin.

On the other hand, the same technique may be used to track any other printed materials, including those you considered personal. No law requires printer manufacturers to use that kind of embedded markings. No law prevents government services from tracking and collecting the information using these markings.

However, there is something you can do about this. Remember that color laser printers don’t make hidden dots, if printing in black-and-white mode. Monochrome laser printer, as well as inkjet and dot-matrix printers are also dots-free. The Electronic Frontier Foundation maintains and regularly updates a list of printers that do and don’t have the tracking dots. Just check it out to see if your printer is spying on you or not.

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Did you even wonder what printing pages feel like? They are warm from fuser heat and smell like… well, they, probably, smell of just fused toner. Boring, right? Now imagine if a page you got took from printer gives off fragrances of lavender or roses. Ladies and gentlemen, please meet a perfumed printer.

Sagem Communication makes its effort to improve the workplace atmosphere and presents a new concept in office aromatherapy: the Zen Cube. The cube attaches to the machine’s ventilation slots and diffuses a perfume specially developed by aroma therapists:

“The perfume is diffused upon each printing (or receiving of a fax), with the activation of the ventilation system. The warm air (27° C) expelled by the machine slowly and steadily diffuses the perfume in the office via the Zen Cube, thereby creating a new workplace atmosphere.”

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 When we speak of printer cost efficiency, first think we consider is user’s printing needs. If lots of monochrome printing is required, one would recommend to have a laser black-and-white printer. For occasional 2 to 5 pages printing at home, an inkjet printer would do just fine. Once we decided on printer type, next thing coming is price and cost-per-pages effectiveness of cartridges used. That is, how much you pay for a cartridge and how many pages it would print for the money.

Hardware issues aside, there are many printing tips on the internet from users, experts and even manufacturers on how to save ink and money: using separate cartridges, printing in draft mode, choosing paper saving layouts, etc. Google returns 69,900,000 pages for “printing tips”, just check them out.

One factor I’ve never heard mentioned is power consummation.

Darren Yates from Australian Techlogg.com tested home appliances and electronic devices to measure how much power they actually consume. The power measured was actual or “real” power used by device, standby power and what Daren called “apparent power”, the power to be delivered to the device so that it worked.

Among microwaves and plasma TVs, there were two devices that drew my attention – laser and inkjet printers. The former happened to be Lexmark E230 laser printer, while the latter was Canon S800 inkjet printer.

When in standby mode, laser printer pulled modest 5.9 watts, but as soon as the printing started, power consummation surged up to 699.2 watts for a second during each page print. The inkjet printer started at 1.9 watts in standby mode and followed by only 19 watts top in printing mode. Obviously, inkjet printers outperform their laser counterparts, if we speak of energy efficiency in printing and Darren Yates’s verdict is:

Inkjet printers use up to 90% less power than laser printers while printing but things are pretty much even in standby mode.

Something to remember when looking for a way to cut costs.

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Printing digital photos at home has become a common thing. We capture moments of our life with a camera, print them in vivid color with an inkjet printer and share them with our friends. To say “Look how much fun we had at the party” is all most pictures are for. “Look what precise, bright and shiny colors my printer can print” is what you may say if you’re a bit on geek side.

Most of us are not really concerned about how long the photo will last. But some people are.

The thing is, inkjet prints dominate photography now, and there’s no a standard for testing the permanence of inkjet prints and interpreting the results. Variety of inkjets on the market makes it harder for experts to give advice, so customers face a hard task purchasing an inkjet printer that would definitely produce durable photos.

Current situation with color inkjet prints implicate many factors. Initially, inkjet were designed to print graph-and-chart kind of things, something not intended to last more than one day or so. Photo inkjet paper usually is coated to prevent the ink from soaking into its fibers, so ink remains on the surface, where it’s subjected to light, scratches, etc. Finally, the dye-based inks providing vivid color, don’t add to permanence of prints.

Printer makers approached Henry Wilhelm to develop a system of accelerated testing to estimate how the prints would get along over years. So he run many for lots of printers, assuming that photos framed under glass are more exposure protected compared to those that are not. The results of the tests vary from model to model, of course

“Framed under glass, Wilhelm estimates that prints made on a Hewlett-Packard Photosmart 475, a dye printer that produces snapshot-size photos, will last 82 years. Unframed and exposed to fluorescent light, that drops to 42 years. With other models, the gap can be more drastic.”

Wilhelm himself believes that using years for measure units doesn’t provide clear information for customers. Instead, he offers evaluations in human language:

“At the bottom, he said, would be “terrible,” followed by “pretty good, it will be around in a few years but we’re not really sure if it’s going be there for your grandchildren.” And, finally, “excellent” for products that, presumably, in exchange for durability will be more expensive or troublesome to use.”

Read the full article by Ian Austen

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