The cost of office consumables, particularly toner, ink and copy paper, can be prohibitive. And the recycling consortium is always putting pressure on waste associated with these consumables. So printer manufacturers are coming up with some clever ways to reduce ink and paper costs. Zero-ink technology has been all the rage, but now there’s another alternative: the PrePeat – an innovative office printer that not only uses no ink or toner, it reuses paper.
The PrePeat uses rewritable plastic sheets made from PET plastic. These sheets can be erased and re-printed about 1000 times per sheet. The heat-sensitive plastic sheets are fed into the printer and a line thermal head either prints a new document in black and white or erases an existing document and reprints another – allowing you to re-use paper again and again.
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Designed by a Japanese company, Sanwa Newtec, the PrePeat is ideal for documents that are only read once – such as office memos or emails. It prints to a 203 dpi resolution and a new model is expected to be capable of printing at a resolution of 305 dpi.
The machine and the plastic sheets come at a salty price. The PrePeat is being priced at around $5,600, and the sheets come in lots of 1000 around $3,360 per lot. Not exactly your run-of-the-mill Office Depot stop, but in the long run, PrePeat is opening the door to new ideas regarding conservation and office product cost-per-ownership. And, as this technology becomes more of a reality, like everything else, mass-production will bring lower cost. (www.sanwa-newtec.co.jp)
