Stunning Eco-Unfriendliness of New Breed of Printers

Stunning Eco-Unfriendliness of New Breed of Printers

My printer gave up the ghost last week. No matter what fixes I tried, no matter how much web advice I took, there was no reviving it. For some arcane reason, my printer cartridges were stuck, even though I could manually move them. Anyway, I figured the four years that I got out of the printer was not too bad, by today’s standards. Little did I imagine.

So off I trundled to Staples in search of a new printer. Actually, I was in the market to replace my four in one, printer, fax, copier & scanner. I was at least delighted by the wireless feature, which meant that not only could our main computer access the printer, but all our laptops could also, without the need for a printer cable. I was less delighted to hear from the man wearing the “Expert” badge that the current expected lifespan of the printer was a mere six months.

The reason for this short life span was as simple as it was devious. The printer manufacturers make their money not on the printers, but on the ink cartridges. New printers take new cartridges numbers, not the previous models’ cartridges. So when the printer dies, so does the usefulness of their now obsolete cartridges. Therefore, the consumer will have to buy new ones, even though on average, they will only have been half used up.

The bottom line is that all the plastic that went into the printer will be dumped back into the environment. Even if it is recycled, that takes energy. Chances are this process is powered by, you guessed it, fossil based fuels. This is the same basic stuff from which petroleum based products, such as the plastic in your printer originate. To add insult to injury, the now obsolete printer ink and their cartridge vessels will also be dumped into the environment, gumming things up for perhaps hundreds of years.

There are two very negative effects resulting from using all this petroleum for plastic – taking it out and putting it back. The Energy Watch Group (EWG) 2007 report shows total world Proved (P95) plus Probable (P50) reserves to be between 854 and 1,255 Gb (30 to 40 years of supply if demand growth were to stop immediately). So let’s use one trillion barrels as a round number. This corresponds roughly to the amount that we’ve already used since oil was first discovered as a major energy source at the end of the 19th century. Guess what. This resource is not renewable. It took millions of years of animals and plants dying and sinking into the ground to produce.

Basically, we’re running out. This is not over-hyped eco-fanaticism, just simple mathematics. As previously mentioned, the disposal side is not pretty either. Some of the surplus plastic winds up in the ocean.In fact, there is a region known as the great Pacific Ocean garbage patch, about twice the size of Texas, where much of the world’s plastic winds up. Eventually, the plastic breaks down and is eaten by the fish. Next, the now toxic fish are eaten by humans, creating an extremely unhealthy and eco-disastrous situation.

E.O. Wilson is a Biology Professor at Harvard, and one of the world’s most respected naturists. He’s also one of my personal favorites, having written the landmark book “Sociobiology”, in the 1970s. In his more recent work “Consilience”, Wilson predicted that the world would run out of resources sometime in the late 21st century. Historians will note that the British scholar Thomas Malthus, writing in the early 19th century predicted similar results, which according to Malthus, should have happened a long time ago. The difference is that Wilson’s models are much more refined (excuse the pun) and reflect a broad consensus within the scientific community.

So the bottom line is that the printer manufacturers should change the way they do business. Make the printers last longer and help to protect the health and future of the planet.