Xerox is Making Reusable Paper
Filed Under: Green Technology on November 7, 2009
This is a totally great idea. In most circumstances, it would be extremely useful. Basically, Xerox has realized that most of the energy put into printing is the paper itself, at a factor of about 20:1. The idea is to make the paper re-usable so that those of us who don’t need permanent copy have the option of recycling our paper without, well, recycling it.
If your habits are like mine, you print things you want to use once, read once, and then you either recycle the paper or use it for scrap paper. In our house, given the amount of research I do for a living, there is a lot of paper use. I compress printing (usually four pages into one, a good printer can do that) and print on both sides. But I still manage to go through a ream of paper relatively fast.
If all I had to do was heat the paper up to erase the ink and make it ready for re-use, I’d be in awesome shape. I can honestly say I’d be willing to pay double the price (or more) for this paper, since I’d get so much use out of it. I currently buy recycled paper, which is generally 20-30% more expensive. I would see this as a serious upgrade.
Here’s video on how this works:
