Green Printer Blog

For every pro there is a con, this is something we can’t avoid. But, when we’re talking about the benefits of using recycled paper sources, we have several reasons to pay more attention to the pros instead of the cons.

Let’s get right down to it. Using recycled paper is much less harmful to our environment when speaking in terms of its production process. The United States Environmental Protection Agency has stated that the production of one ton of recycled fibers, on average, can save up to 17 trees, 3.3 cubic yards of landfill space, 360 gallons of water, 100 gallons of gasoline used for heating the pulp, 60 pounds less air pollution, and over 10,000 kilowatts of electricity.

These savings are enormous. As nearly 30% of the waste in any landfill is paper based, we end up injecting far less pollution directly into the environment. Recycled fibers can be reused an average of four times before they become too weak to re-pulp and create quality paper. Sometimes it’s common for paper producing companies to use a mixture of recycled paper pulp and virgin pulp (new pulp) to extend the life of the recycled sources and ensure a quality finished product.

In other cases paper that decays to an undesirable level of quality is also used in lower quality paper products, such as note pads. All in all, with the amount of used paper available for recycling, there’s no reason why any source of paper should be overlooked when considering a recycling process. So don’t throw that paper away, recycle it!

Recycling of all kinds is becoming more and more important as consumption levels increase worldwide. Paper production, which is fueled by deforesting vast amounts of the world’s naturally forested areas, is becoming a threat to the environment. Methods of recycling print paper for reusability are now becoming a necessity to preserve our future.

Howstuffworks.com stated that on average, a 1610 pound tree can produce about 80,500 sheets of paper, which adds up to only 161 packs of print paper. By using recycled stock printing resources, we are able to avoid cutting down countless trees.

Several magazines around the world have started to outsource traditional paper usage and have switched to 100% recycled stock. The University of Toronto magazine (U of T) is one who has found great savings with the switch. In an article by U of T magazine, they have stated to the switch has amounted in saving nearly 2000 trees per year, energy savings that could heat about 13 homes, and approximately 13 garbage trucks worth of yearly waste. There are nearly 700 or more magazines in the US alone and nearly 30 million trees are cut down each year worldwide.

Nearly one and a half million trees could be saved annually simply using a recycled source of paper in all US magazines. To gain a visual perspective on how much of an area one and a half million trees can fill (based on tree spacing of a two foot by foot spread), they would occupy about 100 American Football fields, or 114 city blocks.

Interested in switching to environmentally friendly printing? Click Here.

Production cost in the printing industry, as with all industry, inevitably falls during the span of its development because of advances in production efficiency. Sustainability is now known to be the most important part of any product or production process.

Within the printing industry, sustainable printing is of the most important of these processes. Printing production is historically done by using a powerful heating source to bake the ink into the paper. The high levels of heat needed for its production make it quite inefficient and increase the release of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into the environment. This in turn makes it difficult for some companies to pass EPA standards.

Most printing ink used today is a mixture of either three compounds: petroleum-based, vegetable-based, and soy-based inks. Current regulations state that petroleum based inks must stay below 30 percent release of VOCs, which is the reason for mixing petroleum-based inks with that of vegetable and Soy. Though using 100 percent vegetable or soy-based ink would be much more environmentally friendly, higher heats are needed to dry the ink and the quality of printing is slightly lessened.

Efforts to create competitive vegetable-based ink sources, which carry no VOC release and have a low drying times, are currently being tested. If these ventures are successful, the future of the printing press will take a leap into a greener future.

Interested in switching to environmentally friendly printing? Click Here.

If you are like most people, you probably know that you can recycle such things as milk jugs and glass jars. But you may be passing up on recycling things that you didn’t even realize could be recycled. Now is the time to take a look at what can be recycled that you may be sending to the landfill and see what you can do to help give these items a second life.
It’s estimated that every day in America the average adult generates around 4.5 pounds of waste, or garbage. Of that, they recycle just over 1 pound of it, sending the majority of it straight to the landfill, where it will be buried in the Earth for years, sometimes hundreds of them, to come. Every effort you make now to recycle is a step in the right direction.
Here are 3 things that you can recycle that you probably didn’t even realize you could:

1. Foil. Only a small percentage of aluminum foil is recycled each year, simply because many people don’t realize that it can be recycled. Whatever foil you use for cooking, such as covering items, or even foil pie tins and cooking trays, can be put right into your recycle bin after rinsing any food off of them.
2. Cartons. If you purchase juice in a carton, or even shelf-stable milk products, you may have been tossing the empty cartons into the trash. These can be added right into your recycling bin, as they are made from paperboard.
3. Unwanted mail. It’s estimated that the average person gets around 41 pounds of junk mail each year. Rather than toss all that paper into the trash, toss it right into your recycling bin. Better yet, try to get taken off some of the mailing lists you no longer want to be on.
You would be surprised at how many things actually can be put into your recycling bin. If you are unsure if something can be recycled, call your local recycling center and ask them. They will be more than happy to confirm for you one way or another!

Here’s an update from the Environmental News Network about carton recycling, one of the newest recycling movements in the US:

Cartons are recyclable! Made mainly from paper, cartons are in demand to be recycled into new paper products.

The Carton Council is committed to increasing carton recycling in the United States. By promoting both recycling technology and local collection programs they work to limit the number of valuable cartons that end up in a landfill.

The Carton Council, formed by four of the country’s leading carton manufacturers—Elopak, Evergreen Packaging, SIG Combibloc and Tetra Pak, is specifically committed to increasing carton recycling in the United States. Made mainly from paper, a renewable resource from responsibly managed forests, cartons are recyclable. By promoting both recycling technology and local collection programs, the Carton Council is planning to limit the amount of cartons that end up in a landfill.

The implementation of carton recycling in Dallas is the latest example of a national trend.  In 2008, only 18 percent of U.S. households had access to carton recycling programs.  Today, this number has nearly doubled to almost 36%, with cities in over 40 states representing approximately 40 million households now accepting cartons in their curbside collection programs.  Dallas increases these numbers by an additional 235,000 households, and is setting the bar for other cities in the state of Texas to follow suit.  Dallas also joins a growing number of cities across the country such as Los Angeles, New York, and Boston that have expanded their recycling programs to include cartons.

Last year, the City of Dallas recycled more than 50,000 tons of materials and is on track to recycle nearly 65,000 tons this year.  Carton recycling will help the city toward their 31% diversion goal for the year.  By increasing their recycling rate and coming up with innovative ways to increase waste diversion, the city saved $1,185,260.21 of landfill space.

For further information:  http://recyclecartons.com/

Even if you don’t live in an area that is offering carton recycling, you can encourage your local community to ask for this program to be implemented! Let local officials know that you’re interested in the latest advances in protecting the environment!

On the tenth anniversary of September 11th, the memorial site has been unveiled to the public. Not only is the memorial space beautiful and tastefully designed, it is environmentally friendly as well.

From Treehugger:

From a green roof to locally harvested trees, the National September 11 Memorial and Museum opens on the 10th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center with a dedication and much media coverage of every angle, including Steven Spielberg’s The Rising: Rebuilding Ground Zero. Despite delays, this moving site centers on two dramatic waterfalls and reflecting pools in the footprints of the Twin Towers as the focus on the 16-acre site for contemplation and the commemoration of 9/11. The sustainable features in the design were intended to be viewed as a sign of hope.

…

The water-conserving irrigation system includes stormwater capture in underground storage tanks to saves energy and resources. A suspended paving system supports the trees with soil-filled troughs and pavement for walking. The space is seeking LEED Gold certification. The plaza also meets the environment-conscious practices required by New York State Executive Order 11 and the WTC Sustainable Design Guidelines.

In addition, one new structure at the World Trade Center site that has replaced a fallen building, features a sophisticated system that generates off-peak electricity and composts paper waste.

- Roberta Cruger, Treehugger: A Discovery Company

Image via The Huffington Post

For those of you who love star-gazing, this piece of news will provide some excitement!

From The Huffington Post‘s Green section:

Last month, scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California discovered what they think could be the youngest — and closest — supernova in decades, leading UC Berkeley’s Joshua Bloom to call it “the supernova of a generation.”

The supernova, which is essentially an exploding star, has been named PTF 11kly. And even though it exploded in the Big Dipper, 21 million light-years away in the Pinwheel Galaxy, you might just get to see it over the next few weeks.

The Huffington Post spoke to Peter Nugent, a senior scientist at the Berkeley Lab who was the first to discover the supernova, who gave us some tips about how best to view the supernova.

- Timothy Stenovec, The Huffington Post

If you’re interested in catching this before its gone, head over to the original article for some great tips on the best equipment, times, and location to view PTF 11kly!

Do you frequently take a look up into the night sky? What are some of your favorite constellations?

A true sign of the precarious environmental times we live in comes in the form of the Petermann Glacier, which lost a very large chunk last year and stands to lose more in the near future. If anyone ever needed proof of the damage that has been done (and is still being done) to our planet, this is a perfect example.

The Huffington Post‘s Green section reports:

When a 100 square mile chunk — an area four times the size of Manhattan — broke off Greenland’s Petermann Glacier in the summer of 2010, scientists knew that it was a historic event. After all, it was the largest known calving in Greenland’s history, and the largest to occur in the Arctic in nearly 50 years.

Over the last year, scientists have only been able to view the extent of the breakup via satellite imagery. Until now.

Photographs taken in July and released on Wednesday offer a new perspective on the August 2010 break, showing before and after images of different areas of Petermann Glacier.

“Although I knew what to expect in terms of ice loss from satellite imagery, I was still completely unprepared for the gob-smacking scale of the breakup, which rendered me speechless,” Alan Hubbard, the scientist from Aberystwyth University in Wales who took the most recent photograph, said in a statement.

And we can expect more. Hubbard told MSNBC.com that another sheet, about half the size of the 2010 chunk, is poised to break away.

Jason Box, a scientist with the Byrd Polar Research Center at The Ohio State University and photographer of the 2009 image, told HuffPost that the summer of 2010 was Greenland’s warmest on record, and records have been kept since 1873.

“We’re bearing witness to abrupt climate change,” Box told HuffPost. “This isn’t of in the future. It’s very much now.”

– Timothy Stenovec, The Huffington Post

Unfortunately, at this point it seems there is not a great deal that can be done to change the course of this glacier’s future. The damage is there, but we need to look forward to the future and what we can do to prevent more incidents like this.

Smartphones have become a universally necessary product for most people. People who love their phones seemingly cannot part with them for even a moment! Now, when speaking about technology and electronic devices, many people probably don’t see that cell phones could be assisting the environment in any way. However, a new study has shown that there are ways these products can help us manage our energy resources.

A recent article from the Environmental News Network reports:

In July, at the Association for Computing Machinery’s MobiSys conference, researchers from MIT and Princeton University took the best-paper award for a system that uses a network of smartphones mounted on car dashboards to collect information about traffic signals and tell drivers when slowing down could help them avoid waiting at lights. By reducing the need to idle and accelerate from a standstill, the system saves gas: In tests conducted in Cambridge, Mass., it helped drivers cut fuel consumption by 20 percent. Cars are responsible for 28 percent of the energy consumption and 32 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions in the United States, says Emmanouil Koukoumidis, a visiting researcher at MIT who led the project. “If you can save even a small percentage of that, then you can have a large effect on the energy that the U.S. consumes,” Koukoumidis says.

Who knew that our phones could also help promote greener living? Very exciting stuff.

Can you think of any additional ways that smartphones (or other popular electronic devices) could help the environment? Are there any Apps available that you’d recommend for others interested in green living?

Image via The New Yorker

Between earthquakes, tornado warnings, and a hurricane-turned-tropical storm, the US’s east coast has had a tough week in weather. A common question associated with major weather events is whether or not they are caused, or exacerbated, by global warming.

Take a look at this excerpt from The New Yorker for a preliminary answer:

Are more events like Irene what you would expect in a warming world? Here the answer is a straightforward “yes.” In fact, experts have been warning for years that New York will become increasingly vulnerable to storm surges and flooding as the planet heats up. In 2009, the New York City Panel on Climate Change, appointed by Mayor Bloomberg, concluded that, as a result of global warming, “more frequent and enhanced coastal flooding” was “very likely” and that “shortened 100-year flood recurrence period” was also “very likely.” Much of the problem simply has to do with sea levels—as these rise, any storm or storm surge becomes more dangerous. Marcus Bowman, an oceanography professor at Stony Brook University, has warned that the city could one day have “flood days,” the way it now has snow days.

Meanwhile, rising temperatures make other risks worse as well. Warm air holds more moisture, so as temperatures rise there is more water available to the system. And warmer ocean temperatures mean there is more energy available to fuel severe storms like Irene. As Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Boulder, explained recently on the blog Climate Progress, “Owing to higher SSTs [sea surface temperatures] from human activities, the increased water vapor in the atmosphere leads to 5 to 10% more rainfall and increases the risk of flooding.” Also, “because water vapor and higher ocean temperatures help fuel the storm, it is likely to be more intense and bigger as well.”

When we add all of these risk factors together, we can say with a great deal of confidence that in the future, there will be more and more events like Irene. We can comfort ourselves by saying that this particular storm was not necessarily caused by global warming. Or we can acknowledge the truth, which is that we are making the world a more dangerous place and, what’s more, that we know it.

- Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker

We hope you all had a safe and happy weekend, with or without these weather occurrences!