Office Papermaking System That Turns Waste Paper into New Paper

&quot;...this essential tool is also produced from a limited resource.&quot;<p>Noop. Paper comes from trees. Trees are not a limited resource. They grow again. A well-managed forest will provide forever. Looking at the complexity of this machine, the plastics and metal used, and its probable energy consumption, I doubt it is any more environmentally friendly than new or traditional recycled paper.<p>I also cannot see this thing recycling forever. It adds chemicals, binders, to the new paper. Subsequent generations will be more and more binder and less and less paper. So the process will need an intake of new paper at one end, and a disposal of used paper waste at the other. And now instead of relatively harmless paper ready for recycling, that waste is toxic sludge of binders and fragrances.

My first thought was to question the energy efficiency of this kind of system. However, it&#x27;s interesting from the angle of secure document destruction: the system is essentially a high security shredder with a side effect of spitting out &quot;new&quot; paper.

That&#x27;s an impressive achievement. But how many offices use substantial amounts of paper entirely internally any more?<p>The big problem with paper recycling is that the fibers get shorter on each pass, resulting in weaker paper. Going closed-cycle on paper is going to make that problem worse. It&#x27;s not like aluminum, where you can go round and round forever without deterioration. Now if the system can take junk mail as a feedstock, it will be more useful.

This seems very useful for schools, who both need lots of paper (still even now) and who need it only for a short time.<p>Schools have the space and resources for such a machine, and they could potentially save lots of money and paper that otherwise goes into the trash at home. It all depends on the costs of the system.

Ahh, the cycle of bureaucracy[0].<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;tIFidJt.gif" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;tIFidJt.gif</a>

Knowing Epson, the catch is probably along the lines of &quot;requires consumable cartridges that cost as much as the machine itself&quot;.<p>I&#x27;m only half-joking.

Without water, even assuming people don&#x27;t mix in colored papers, won&#x27;t the recycled papers get darker and darker? Maybe the fibers are so small that it just throws away the dark ones.

It&#x27;s hard to imagine that this machine could be cheaper to own and operate than just buying new paper. If it&#x27;s not then it&#x27;s just a show-off item for Epson that nobody will actually use.<p>However, if it is cheaper, that might be a game changer! Maybe it does it by eliminating the collection and sorting costs from traditional recycling.

This machine is not going to help the most common use of paper in the offices these days as the monitor stands and height elevators for the tables.