cmykreation: October 2008

Monday, October 27, 2008

Field Trip!

Leaving from DAAP blue box at noon on Friday.

We're visiting an e-waste recycling site in columbus

2050 East Williams Road

614.209.4471

Here's the website.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Whole systems thinking, includes facts such as:

The most recent EPA data show that pulping and papermaking stands second only to oil refining as a producer of nitrogen and sulfur oxides. Printers, meanwhile, take the silver behind big steel's gold standard for carbon-monoxide emissions. Armed with these two facts at your next client meeting, maybe it won't be so hard to get buy-in after all.

EPA's report that airborne emissions account for 99% of the printing industry's toxic releases easily gives atmospheric issues precedence as the foremost print-ecology consideration. Unfortunately, users in a small to medium office setting have relatively few options for safeguarding indoor air quality beyond providing adequate and, if possible, separate ventilation for conventional office printers.

However, one choice stands out far above any other. Originally developed by Tektronix in the early 1990s, Xerox's line of Phaser solid-ink color printers are free of solvents or hazardous chemicals, emit no odors or fumes and generate miniscule amounts of solid waste, unlike typical color lasers. Phasers start at $1,000. Xerox also operates a FreeColorPrinters program, which hinges on participants agreeing to a sole source of ink and minimum monthly usage levels.

And also neat info on inks and papers

Xerox PDF on Sustainability

Super helpful and informative

Dry Toner or Inkjet?

From a website on green printing:

Environmental issues have become key initiatives for print manufacturers, with increasing demand for eco-friendly technologies not only from environmental groups but also progressively more government mandates. Reducing Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) emissions to meet new environmental standards has become a printing industry requirement. Electrophotography's dry toner-based systems do not contain solvents, volatile substances or low molecular weight components, making them far superior to solvent- based inkjet and liquid toner—both with respect to VOC emissions and paper recyclability.

Inkjet technology sees UV inks as a solution for both reducing VOC emissions and addressing the evaporation issues when the ink is in the printhead to prevent nozzle clogging. However, UV light increases the energy consumption during printing, and the reactive type of chemicals used in these inks create safety concerns for operators and service engineers. Depending on the type of end-user application, special safety precautions have to be taken (e.g. in printing material for food applications).

UV inks continue to have issues with respect to the deinkability behavior. During the recycling process, repulping causes UV-curable and liquid toner inks to become ink specks—too large to be removed by flotation and too elastic to be removed by screening. When looking at pigmented inkjet inks, the flotation process doesn't work as well because the particles are too small to be removed. Dry toners, used for digital color printing processes, are widely accepted as deinkable. — Dr. Lode Deprez, VP Toner Development Group for Xeikon unit at Punch Graphix

Sustainabl(er) printing

A good PDF on sustainable printing.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

sheep poo paper

not kidding.

Solid Ink

A good and comprehensive article on Solid Ink printing.

Synthetic Paper

Completely recyclable (made of #5 plastic Polypropylene), this is the same "paper" that was used for the book Cradle to Cradle.

Yumo makes it for the consumer and printing press market.

We'll have to think carefully about the proper inks to use on this paper. But I think we can probably come up with something that allows us to reuse the paper and inks indefinitely within the office.

Bamboo Casing

These computers by Asus use bamboo casings.

Xerox Disappearing Ink Paper

Xerox's disappearing ink via cnet

The paper is coated with photosensitive chemicals that turn dark when hit with UV light.

Users don't have to wait for the paper to fade- by running it through the special printer made for this paper, the printer will erase the old image before putting the new one on. The special paper can be run through the printer roughly 100 times.

Xerox says that 44.5 percent of documents are printed for one-time use and 25 percent of all documents printed get recycled the same day.

It takes about 204,000 joules to make a sheet of paper, Shrader said. That's about the same amount of power required to run a 60-watt light bulb for an hour, he added. Recycling that same sheet of paper takes about 114,000 joules.
Printing a conventional 8x11.5 sheet of paper takes about 2,000 joules, he said.
Reusable paper takes a lot less effort. It only takes 1,000 joules to print an image on one of Xerox's reusable sheets of paper, and that's if you use the printer to erase the image. If you let the image fade naturally, it only takes about 100 joules to print.

After you've used it 100 times, I don't know if this special paper can be recycled or not.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

*click image for higher res photo.

Samsung National Recycling

So Samsung has a national recycling program!

They have a take-back location for their electronics at 3650 Brookham Drive, Grove City, OH 43123 (614-871-1456) - basically Columbus.

Samsung also has a toner take-back program. The program uses FedEx and is free for consumers.

Green Materials Website

Cool site for sustainable materials...

Here is an image link to a material:
a 100% recyclable polyethylene produced
using sugarcane.

Some E-waste facts and figures

This PDF contains some helpful data on amount/distribution of e-waste.

Unsurprisingly, most e-waste is generated in affluent countries and then exported to India, China, and other Asian countries (with China receiving 90% of the waste stream).

Other interesting facts- most US consumers have two to three obsolete computers in their garages or storage space. The US is one of the only countries in the world that has not yet ratified the Basel Ban (which requires countries not to export e-waste to other members of the treaty.)

Biopolymer/biodegradable plastic

"This material is the biopolymer
application of Miscanthus combined
with colza oil as a highly biodegradable
plastic. The photos on this page show
an example of a biodegradable flower pot."

"Benefits of the Miscanthus as a raw material:
- high capacity of sound absorption
- good thermal insulation
- 100% chemical free
- 80% weight reduction compared to concrete