ENV 101: How to be Green While Appearing Otherwise
Several of our articles in the past have been about greener printing whether through the use of different fonts to save ink and paper or through the recycling of printers and printer accessories. We feel that there are ways to decrease our carbon footprint and with small adjustments to your working world, we can all help to save the environment.
You can imagine our chagrin when we came across a stunt that was pulled recently to set a world record – “The Largest printout in the World unveiled at CeBIT.”
CeBIT is “the world’s largest trade fair showcasing digital IT and telecommunications solutions for home and work environments.” It has been held annually in Hannover, Germany since 1986 and their key mission is to create an international platform for notes comparison and to showcase key findings.
At the 2009 conference, PrintDreams, a company based out of London whose main focus is taking a visionary look at eco-friendly printing, decided to create the largest printout in the world in a parking lot in Hannover.
The printout consisted of “15.5 trillion ink dots on 7,000 square meters of ordinary office paper… [a] full color, high definition image in an unprecedented format. While normal desktop output is best viewed at arm’s length, this record-breaking printout [needed] to be seen from the sky – or at least a couple hundred meters away.”
Take a moment to look at the printout below (no sound).
My first thought was “That’s a lot of paper.“ More than 110,000 sheets, to be exact. I was immediately angry at this complete waste of ink and paper all for the sake of a record. It seemed excessive for something so silly.
Appearances aren’t always as they seem. PrintDreams created this display for an important environmental message. They used RMPT™ (Random Movement Printing Technology) to create the advertisement and the benefits of this technology far outweigh the 30 trees that were sacrificed.
Raw Materials – Globally, adoption of RMPT™ could save up to 325,000metrics tons of raw materials which are enough to build 4 cruise ships. It might not seem like much, but take the Titanic, add updated technology and then clone it 3 times. That’s a lot of square footage and luxury.
Electricity – According to PrintDreams, printers annually use about 2% of the world’s energy consumption. RMPT™ printers like the PrintBrush™ could save 291 terawatt/hours of electricity each year. This is similar to the annual amount of energy used by Italy.
Shipping – Nearly 100 million printers are shipped throughout the world each year. These printers require boxes, labels and packaging materials which add up quickly for medium to large sized printers. RMPT™ technology is on a much smaller scale and would greatly reduce our shipping footprint.
Manufacturing – PrintDreams’ printers can fit in the palm of your hand. You can take it with you on a plane, to church or to a fancy party. Manufacturing is on a much smaller scale and reduces post-manufacturing materials. Likewise, less energy is used, workplaces are safer and entry-level jobs more likely.
The technology is there to be environmentally friendly without compromising printout quality or printing speed. The biggest drawback is large print runs, but for smaller jobs like printing out an e-mail, PrintDreams’ efficiency can greatly impact the world’s ecology. We can only hope that they recycled those 30 trees so they can be used again.
Read the original article: The Largest printout in the World unveiled at CeBIT.
See our previous article about a printer that uses RMPT™.
