Stop killing trees ánd ink cartridges!

Stop killing trees Stop killing ink cartridges!

Since killing trees became a major crime at the start of our second semester, I enjoyed the blog postings from my fellow MTB-students Laura and Pieter about alternative printing solutions. Unfortunately, none of these solutions seem to be easily accessible or affordable.  Therefore, I felt morally committed to join Laura and Pieter on their quest and help Astrid achieving the goal of “teaching green”. I did some desk research about eco-friendly printing solutions, and found an interesting sustainable software package called “Ecofont”.

This new software adopted a novel strategy to save money on print supplies. By inserting tiny holes in the middle of every character of the used font at printing, the software enables people to save up to 50% on toner and ink usage, meaning that each letter requires less ink to be printed, without having an effect on legibility. This technique is comparable to printing in draft mode or grayscales. However, these printing modes always result in a lower toner usage at the expense of the printing quality. With Ecofont, the outline of every character remains intact, which means that people will immediately recognize the character while reading, and the text doesn’t look fuzzy.
The Ecofont-software has several other features helping people to minimize printing, for example by automatically removing all of the unnecessary background pictures and white space. All of these easy-to-use options can save a lot of ink and paper as well.
Given the industry is charging extremely high prices for cartridges or toners, the use of the Ecofont software can save us some important cash on yearly base. And least we can do the environment a small favour!

So even if we can’t prevent Astrid from killing trees, at least we can prevent her from killing ink cartridges! ;-)

Interesting note: The Ecofont-software was announced winner of the Dutch Accenture Innovation Award  in 2011 in the consumer products category. The Accenture Innovation Award jury consists of several directors of famous international companies such as Unilever, Heineken and FrieslandCampina. Innovations are judged on the degree of innovation, their success and potential. 

http://www.ecofont.com/

Thomas Catteeuw