Slash Printing Wastes with the Paperless PrePeat Printer

At this point, we all know we should be moving towards a paperless office for the sake of both our wallets and our planet. While printer paper is relatively cheap, printer ink is one of the most expensive liquids on the market. And even when you recycle your used paper like we do here at WhiteFence, printing is still far from an eco-friendly activity.

Yet, despite the environmental and financial impacts, there are times where you simply have to print something out. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a budget-friendly green solution for those occasions?

Japanese firm Sanwa Newtec think they have just that solution. Their PrePeat printer uses not paper, but heat-sensitive PET plastic sheets. These sheets can be used up to 1,000 times according to the manufacturer and totally cut out the need for both paper and ink. Think of it as the paper version of the CD-RW, those rewriteable CDs you could burn files to over and over again.

Of course, this is very early in the life of paperless printing market and costs are still pretty prohibitive for the average consumer.­ The PrePeat itself will currently set you back over five grand, not to mention the ream of 1,000 PET sheets you’d have to buy for over three thousand more dollars. But hey, even at those prices you’d be able to get one million prints for less than $10,000, which works out to less than one penny per print—not bad for an environmentally friendly printer.

As much as I’m looking forward to this, I do have one question: will people be able to see the “history” of your sheets?

Image Via Sanwa Newtec