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Recycling in the Office

General Comments March 29th 2012

Currently the health of the environment is under discussion as our effect on the earth can be quite rightly said is a negative one. Our offices are a big problem; in particular the amount of paper that we throw away is not recycled. It is said that the average office worker uses around 10,000 sheets of paper each year and the United States that has 5% of the world’s population, consumes approximately 30% of the world’s paper. Not only can this but the cost of actually using paper in the office can be between 15 to 31 times the costs of actually buying the paper in the first place.

What people don’t seem to realise is that these costs all add up from the actual buying of the paper, to the storage, copying, printing, postage and disposal of the paper. It is for these reasons that something needs to be done in regards to the recycling of paper and experts at Cambridge University think that they have the answer.

A revolutionary study has uncovered that by using lasers, the toner present on paper can actually be removed and the paper reused. Dr Julian Allwood who is leading the study at Cambridge University tested this theory by testing dozens of lasers to discover the perfect speed, energy and frequency needed to remove the toner.

As outlined in the previous paragraph, we use a huge amount of paper in the office. This is not just the paper that sits on our office desks, but that also sits in the printers, kept in filing cabinets and tambour cupboards and the paper we use in the post.

"Thanks to hand-held scanners and laser-jet printers, the feasibility for reusing paper in the office is there.”

"Material recovery through reusing eliminates the forestry step from the life cycle of paper and eradicates emissions arising from incineration and landfill dumping."

It is said that with this new tool to remove toner rather than just recycle the paper is 19 per cent more effective than recycling which lowers omissions by 76 per cent.

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