Inkjet printers are bad for the environment
If you're looking to green your home office (or small business), you might want to get a laser printer instead of an inkjet. A comparison by TreeHugger finds a host of reasons why the common inkjet printer is a bad environmental bet.
The biggest problem is that inkjet-printed paper is almost impossible to recycle. The inks can't be separated from the paper, so the resulting recycled-content paper wouldn't be bright and printable again.
Most inkjet inks also release volatile organic carbons -- the dry toner used in laser printers usually is not. Some water-based inks are available for inkjet printers, but that still doesn't make the printed papers recyclable.
You also get fewer printed pages per cartridge with an inkjet than you do pages per toner cartridge for a laser printer. So you have to buy a lot more ink jet cartridges, which means a lot more plastic to either throw away or hopefully have recycled and refilled.
Laser printers cost more upfront than inkjet printers, but the prices have come down a lot in the past five years. TreeHugger also points out that the cost-per-page is less for a laser printer. The site compared 47 printers (inkjet and laser), each costing under $500, and TreeHugger found that a monochrome laser print was as low as 1.4 cents per page, while the color inkjet was 5.7 cents per page.
Of course, people like inkjets for printing photos, but honestly, how many photos will you print every year? If it's really important, you can always get a small inkjet printer for photos only (several are sold that you can connect directly to your digital camera). Then use a laser printer for all other printing needs, and you can recycle those papers easily.
And ask yourself if you really need to print that document at all. Salon's resident green expert analyzed the energy use of reading online versus printing something out to read. You really do create less greenhouse gas emissions when you read on a computer screen. So give paperless a shot.
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