Self-Recycling Paper

fermion writes "Xerox is reported to be working on some interesting forms of digital paper. The New York Times reports a 16 hour reusable paper. This system uses a coated paper and special ink to produce a copy that will fade over 16 hours, or sooner if the paper is put back in the copy tray. It can then be reused for a new copy, up to 10 times. According to the article, the rational for this is that paper is no longer used to store information, but merely to temporarily display it. The research suggest that in the typical office many copies end up in the recycle bin by the end of the day. The main obstacle to commercialization seems to be the question of whether people need this product. Will people have digital displays that will take the place of paper? Will something radically different from plain paper, but with competitive costs and characteristics, become popular? Xerox itself is working on something called gyricon, a system of tiny bichromal beads encased between sheets of plastics. Evidently the beads can be set electrically to either reflect of absorb light, thus allowing images to be generated at will. According to the page, the images can be set by a printer or a hand held wand. The 'paper' could even be combined with electronics to create a flexible display. So, /., where is our display technology headed? Coated conventional paper? Plastic reprintable paper? Glasses with heads up displays and wireless data feed?"

Comments

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would I want to print something out that would fade in less than a day? At best this is a super niche use.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

In case you've never considered it, white boards are available pretty cheaply and are convenient for that (I bought one when I was taking several math classes and starting to feel bad about how much paper was wasted to false starts of problems). Chalkboard paint to make a wall into a chalkboard would also be workable.

Re:Why?

[ScrewMaster]

There was a white-collar gang that was caught some years ago that did something similar. They cashed lots of bad checks that were chemically treated to break down some time later, leaving no obvious evidence that said check ever existed. The way they got caught was because the treated checks began to dissolve other people's checks that were next to them. They still managed to get away with a lot of money before they got nailed. I've since wondered if anyone has repeated that particular gig more successfully ... not that we'd ever hear about it.

Neat idea.

[Somatic]

A neat idea that will never, ever, ever get used in a million years by any office that I know of.

I appreciate the sentiment, but business is about getting business done. The first time work was lost because someone left the memo on their desk for more than xxx hours would be the end of the system. I can imagine some cruel managers getting a kick out of it, but that's about it.

The "paperless office" was a 100x better idea than this (and an idea that's not entirely dead, either. I telecommute, and my office is 99.9% paperless).

How old is the Xerox page?

[Anonymous Coward]

That Xerox page has photos taken with a 10-year-old digital camera! Other photos on the page were taken with a Kodak camera from a generation after that, but still not from this millenium.

My guess is this is just some research project from ages ago that never went anywhere. If they developed it that long ago, wouldn't it have become a product that we'd have heard of by now?

dom

That's just it

[grahamsz]

I work on the data in a number of reports and frequently print the works in copy while i tweak the calculations or formatting.

99% of the time they are in the recycle bin within the hour, but sometimes i'll have a particular issue that means i need the printout for a week or more.

The other big plus to paper is that i can annotate things that might be hard on screen. I imagine if i make pencil scribblings on it it'll be useless for recycling.

In the corporate world many things are printed and never read. I had a tech lead years ago that swore he put a photocopied page from a russian engineering textbook in every large report he ever submitted to management - never got asked about it.

Re:Reusable paper good idea but only in volume

[Shemmie]

This is why I see the bead-type paper become mainstream one day, and this idea going nowhere. Reusable paper's all well and good, but its the user who needs to be able to dictate when the paper is no longer useful, and ready for recycling. That, combined with the fact that if paper's to be reusable, it needs far more life than 10 uses. After 10 uses, it's the same as our current situation, and it needs disposing of. Proper electronic paper, I would hope and imagine, would last longer than 10 'prints'

Passive screen

[dargaud]

I've always disliked having a light shone in my face all day, which is exactly what a monitor amounts to. It creates the light used for display; on the other hand a sheet of paper just reflects ambient light and is thus much nicer on the eyes (same overall brightness than ambient, same color temperature, etc). I've been following all this epaper stuff for a long time, the sony ebook reader now sold and other advances in the field. What is still missing from most of those is color.

There are *some* e-ink products around...

[Kadin2048]

FWIW, I believe Sony has an "e-ink" based product on the market, it's some sort of uber-expensive ebook reader. I'm fairly certain it's going to be a flop, but it's not a bad demonstration of the technology. I think it's called the Libre in Japan and the Sony Reader in the U.S. (As usual, it's supposed to use some ridiculously draconian DRM if you use it according to Sony's plan.)

Here's a WP article with photo:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Reader

It uses some form of e-ink passive display that involves "microcapsules" filled with dye particles. Frankly the whole thing sounds suspiciously like an electronic etch-a-sketch.

I certainly would use this

[Big Nothing]

I would certainly use this. 90% of the print-outs I make go straight into the recycle bin, so this paper would be perfect for my use. The real question is: with the additional coating, does this paper decrease the environmental stress, or add to it? The equation would be using this paper (up to) ten times versus using ten regular sheets of paper - witch has the higher cost-benefit?

One Word:

[Cruise_WD]

Staples

I took a quick look around the many bits of paper scattered about my desk, most of which I looked at once and then chucked aside, and thought how useful this would be - until I noticed how many had been stapled together. Sure, you /can/ use paper clips, but my boss doesn't, and I can see a lot of people forgetting.