Last week’s
hot topic was without any doubt Astrid wasting far too much printing paper
during her course session. Since this behavior is totally in fight with the
ecological thinking of nowadays, I asked myself: “How could we stop our dearest
teacher from killing more trees?” This acute question led me to the discovery
of an amazing equipment: The Prepeat:
an ecological printer that makes the purchase and the consumption of paper and ink
superfluous. Hard to believe !?
Just what I
thought, so I gathered some more knowledge about the product. Of course,
inkless printing can hardly be called cutting edge, but the novel approach of the Prepeat consists in the recycling of the
printed paper. Its Japanese inventors (not occasionally originated in the
second most inventive country of the world) developed a special heating system
which simply erases the printed text that was on the paper before. The only
‘but’ is that the Prepeat doesn’t
rely on normal copy paper. Instead, it uses special rewritable sheets made of
plastic that can be recycled one thousand times!
Unfortunately, its current
cost of 500.000 yen (ca.4000€) still hampers the individual purchase of the Prepeat. Rather than that, I should
highly recommend the MTB-community a common purchase of this product in order
to become the first 100% paperless community of the University of Ghent!Convince yourself by this demonstration video:
Pieter Glorieux
I like the way Pieter tried to solve Astrid’s problem of wasting paper during her course. So, he came up with an ecological idea to help Astrid out! The gentleman! Pieter suggested the Prepeat: an ecological printer that makes the purchase and the consumption of paper and ink superfluous. At first sight, this appliance seems to be the must have for each ecological student! Unfortunately the price tag of €4000 is far too high for us (poor) students and even for the whole MTB community…
BeantwoordenVerwijderenWorld consumption of paper has quadruplicated in the last 40 years. Time for action, I think! If the big toys are out of reach, why won’t we all try to save paper the old fashion way? I mean, with some good advice we can together easily save “piles” of paper being more conscience of the paper consumption when we push the print button. This would be an innovation!
The WWF diffuses this advice on their site to reduce the paper consumption:
1. Follow the golden rule: think before you print
2. Use both sides of the sheet of paper
3. Avoid printing out single line e-mails or unnecessary copies of documents
4. Use technology: Electronic mail, Internet, Intranets and document scanners can radically reduce paper use, while also saving you time and money.
5. Recycle the paper you have and ask for recycled paper products
6. Save paper in your workplace
7. Also:
* Use thinner paper and reduce unwanted mail
* reuse paper
Or also:
Print two reduced-size pages on one sheet of paper
Print or make photocopies double-sided
Let’s do all the best we can and be an example to Astrid!
Karen A