Why Paper Recyclers Fear Inkjet Growth
by Christine Lepisto, Berlin 
on 09.17.08
Image credit: Getty Images
If this were a wall of post-consumer inkjet printed papers, that man would be shaking in his safety boots. Here's why. Inkjets are tempting. The price tag may be hundreds of dollars lower than the price of the laserjets on display nearby. Also, the cartridges will set you back as little as $10, maxing out at about $40, compared to laserjet cartridges which start at $60 and go up to hundreds, if you buy the high yield versions. But that cheap up-front allure masks serious side effects.
Cheaper inkjet cartridges have low page yields. That means more trips to the store for replacements. And more cartridge waste, or hopefully, cartridge recycling business which is a lesser evil but still not as good as long-lasting cartridges that prevent waste. Your inkjet will be begging to be fed after only a couple hundred pages. A dry toner cartridge in laserjet application will print thousands of pages, with some high yield cartridges printing 10 - 20,000 pages.
The old rule of thumb used to be that the cost per page would be higher with an inkjet. But the competitive situation puts that old logic to test. Led by Kodak, which has introduced cartridges for as cheap as $9.99 for black and $14.99 for color, the inkjet costs are coming down. A TreeHugger survey of 47 printers on the market as students return to school for fall semester 2008 with manufacturer suggested retail prices listed at under $500 shows:
- 1.4 – 6.3 cents/page for monochrome laserjet printing
- 9.9 –14.7 cents/page for color laserjet printing
- 5.7 – 13.5 cents/page for color inkjet printing
But there is more to the story. An Inkjet Market survey suggests that the market for Inkjet inks is mature, but paper recycling firms reportedly fear the growth of inkjet printed papers in the post-consumer waste stream. With good reason: recycling inkjet printed paper is very hard. Dye-based inkjet inks separated from the paper during repulping are elastic globules, too large to remove by flotation but too flexible to separate by screening. Pigment based ink particles are simply too small to separate, and getting smaller as nanotechnology steps in to make your color printing brighter. In the words of the Print CEO Blog:
Even in small amounts, inkjet printed papers can spoil a load of recovered paper dedicated to be recycled for new newsprint or office papers. The current inkjet inks dissolve in the process water and dye it like a red sock (or here black sock) in the white wash. There it is the underwear that turns pink, here the fibers that turn so dark that the paper screened out of this broth will not meet any brightness specification any more.
Another strike against inkjet inks: the solvent-based inks release volatile organic carbons, which is not the case for dry toner. Although water-based inks are offered as green substitutes, this does not overcome the negative impact of the inkjet inks in the recycling stream.
The bottom line: laserjet printers are available now at relatively low cost. Although it will probably put you back a bit more than an inkjet, try to find an Energy Star certified laserjet to meet your printing needs. If you absolutely need the ability to print photos, purchase a printer dedicated to your photo production rather than printing all of your documents on a photo-capable printer. And whenever you can, go paperless. This will help ensure that the higher energy costs of your laserjet printer are minimized as well as saving forest resources.
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Don't forget though the study posted recently on TH about the air quailty aound laser printers and the particles they emit. Factoring that and the extra power usage needed for the fuser ore they really any better?
You also mentioned color prints, a color laser is more $ than a black and white laser and may be out of most peoples budget then paying for 4 or more laser cartridges at $60 or more for the color laser pushes the budget even more.
Is having a secnd printer dedicated to color really saving resources, much like having that second car in the driveway, it took resources to produce and ship it.
I researched and thought about all these issues for a while and decided on a newer higher end inkjet which uses six cartridges so each is a single color and pretty small compared to the number of pages that can be printed from it so as each individual color is used up only the one cartridge needs recycled.
It's not just paper recyclers that fear Inkjet printers; WEEE recyclers fear them as well!
Well laser printers do use significantly more electricity as compared to inkjets, so it would be interesting to see the lifecycle efficiency considering those.
Other benefits of laserjets are that toner cartridges last a long time before needing to be replaced. I'm not sure the cost per page, but I'm usually able to get thousands of sheets out of my toner cartridge before replacing it. Also, the toner, being dry, never dries out. So you never throw away partially used toner cartridges like you do with inkjet cartridges. After about 5 years, the toner drum can start to break down, which can leave spots on your printouts, but a new cartridge every five years is hardly a burden.
But, a laser printer uses a lot more energy than an inkjet--it needs a hot fuser, heated by electricity. Yes, energy star models don't keep the fuser hot all the time, but it takes a lot of energy to heat it up to print just one page. So for printing a few pages now and then, an ink jet might be the right treehugging choice.
But then you run into the problem of the inkjet heads clogging and needing to be cleaned after long periods of inactivity. This is why I bought a laser printer. Not to mention that the last time I bought toner was over 18 months ago.
To print photos, I either take my memory card to a photo processing center, which are in just about every drug store, or order them online. They've got high-quality, dedicated printers that will do a far better job than all but the most expensive consumer inkjets.
I don't think this problem is new, paper recyclers have had to deal with these ink-jet particles for years. In industry lingo the particles are called "stickies" because they stick to the paper machine or form globes that show up in the final paper. I think recyclers use enzymes and adsorbents to breakdown and remove this stuff, so while it may be difficult, no paper company is going to give up the inexpensive feedstock of recycled paper in addition to the demand for recycled papers.
If you already have an inkjet printer and don't want to put the paper you print out into the recycling, what should you do with it? Can you compost it, or should it be put into (ak) landfill?
Isn't it true that laser ink also is extremely hard to remove from paper and requires several attempts, which weakens the fibers and sometimes makes it useless? So isn't the real answer to print less?
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