Save Paper Towels by Using a Sticker

these cme from trees

This simple sticker can make people aware that the toilet paper and paper towels come from tree. Apparently reminding people of this (also apparently) oft-forgotten fact can help protect the environment. Go order some stickers and put them up in your local coffee shop.

    Testing shows a “These Come From Trees” sticker on a paper towel dispenser reduces paper towel consumption by ~15%
    A typical fast food restaurant with two bathrooms can use up to 2000 pounds of paper towels a year
    The average coffee shop uses 1000 pounds of paper towels a year
    A single tree produces around 100 pounds of paper

This message will disappear in 24 hours

Scientists at Xerox have developed an ink that will disappear from printed paper in 24 hours, allowing the paper to be reprinted and reused again. The ‘disappearing ink’ is actually not an ink at all, but a temporary discoloration of light sensitive molecules known as photochromes. A sheet of paper is coated with these molecules (on both sides) which change color in response to ultraviolet light. After printing, the ‘ink’ starts to revert back to its natural state due to heat provided by the surrounding air. The paper itself is no more expensive than a regular page, costing about 0.5p per sheet.

The technology, which will not be commercially available for several years, will reduce the amount of energy required to print a single page by a factor of 200 – from just over 200kJ (which would power a 75W light bulb for an hour) to 1kJ (which would power the bulb for just 18 seconds), Mr Smith said. A recycled page uses about 110kJ of energy.

Those Crafty Japanese!

First it was paper cranes, now it’s bridges. Architect Shigeru Ban is moving us along the twenty-first century by using very old technology: paper! Ban has created an cardboard bridge in France.

Weighing 7.5 tonnes, the bridge is made from 281 cardboard tubes, each 11.5 centimetres (four inches) across and 11.9 millimetres thick. The steps are recycled paper and plastic and the foundations wooden boxes packed with sand.

It’s environmentally friendly, can be rebuilt and totally cool.

Paper from Poo and Xerox

People tend to use a lot of paper, we can do a lot by lessening how much paper we use. Currently we can buy 100% post-consumer paper and print double-sided. But what if we can go one step further?

Recycled paper mixed with a slurry of sheep poo can make more paper! The amount of jokes that can be made here are endless, but see how it’s made.

Xerox has created a kind of paper that will erase itself. Not only can reduce the amount of paper we use, we can reuse it as well!

“This offers the prospect of reusable paper in the sense that the content is automatically erased after a period of time, ready for fresh printing. Inspired by the fact that many print outs have a life-span of a few hours (think of the emails you may print out just to read, or the content you proof read on the train journey back home), the specially prepared paper will preserve its content for up to 16 hours.”

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