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Soy-Based Toner Cartridges?
Jon.Laslow writes "I'm getting a lot of pressure from managers to switch to soy-based toner cartridges for our laser printers because they are 'greener.' The problem is, the only information I can find on them is from sales pitches; and the reviews all seem to be user testimonials. Do you have any experience soy-based printing products? Did you have any issues with them, and how was the print quality?"
...and let us know.
Your sales pitch will be corny with soy based printers
To be honest, I hadn't even heard of this. This article says the very first cartridges just became available at the end of last year. Amazon has them but it looks they all come from one company (the one mentioned in the article I linked) and I couldn't find any reviews or comments. I did notice that as far as I can tell they are the only company selling soy based toner cartridges and they only sell them for HP right now - though I guess they plan to add others in the future. That may solve your issue right there though, unless you own the right printers.
Interestingly enough the link in TFA doesn't seem to point to a company that does anything other than refurbish and refill toner cartridges with regular toner. Maybe I'm missing something but I don't see a thing about soy based toner. I'm sure someone will point me in the right direction on that if I'm mistaken.
So I'd be interested as well in hearing if anyone has actually used this yet, but unless it has been an immediate disaster it doesn't seem that enough time has passed to tell how well it is going to work.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Is there anything you can't do with Soy? This is ridiculous.
... how does it taste on your sushi?
So, basically, they could create lickable sheets with that process? ... Makes the Rolling Stones tongue suddenly look completely different ...
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
On the first page of a google search for "soy-based laser toner" is a link to a Chicago Tribune article dated April 22. Check that out.
The good news is that if you run out of creamer you can just toss some soy-toner in there, virtually the same thing.
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
Soy Ink? What a freaking joke! The total octopi, or whatever they get ink from, saved by Soy Ink, is truly insignificant.
If your company wants to be green, they need to buy recycled paper, or buy a sustainable forest, or replace all that horrid grass outside with natural prairie and woods.
When are people going to get that using "green" products is still producing consumer waste, and that if you want to truly make an impact, you need to ride your bike sometimes, or something!
Use rice paper, then you can eat any extra printouts.
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
There's mounting evidence that the levels of deforestation being conducted to support the massive growth in soya crops for food related activities alone is unsustainable and environmentally unfriendly.
Any new product that will spur an increase in soya production should be of dubious green value at best.
Soy based toner cartridges are probably ok, but I'd want to see the nutritional composition clearly labeled so we can compare the carbohydrate content with other equipment, such as our roughage-based fax machine.
I think the Ford Model T had Bakelite components, which were made from processed soy protein. But relatively few owners took them apart and shook the components to get more mileage, iirc.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Soyataur, the self-styled all purpose overlord, had ordered the a few of his followers to help him print a Word document. He is still puzzled as to why his followers disappeared so suddenly without letting him know about going off to the milk or tofu business.
"Hegelians, who love a synthesis, will probably conclude that he wears a wig." - Bertrand Russell
initial printouts were as dark as conventional toners. they did not match the darkness of original oem carts but were ok with our HP remanufactured carts in quality with oem toner.
after 3-4 weeks we started to see fade. think thermal fax machine fading type fade. they dont last long with UV light exposure (basically sunlight hitting the laser printout). we've since stopped using em.
YMMV.
I don't know about the print quality, but switching to rice paper made for a delicious combination.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Our office changed all printers' defaults to Draft Mode and duplexing. I've also seen articles on fonts that are composed of tiny dots that use about half the toner.
Soy Green ink is people! Soy Green ink is people!
No,I don't know why it's not red.
If managers are discussing this with you and you're following up, you're doing your job wrong. Deflect the question: mention that really the carbon wasted from one cartridge is really no more than used by running the computers for a week in a year, which is essentially equivalent to 2.5 Volkswagens per library of congress. Use units they understand. Then suggest they compensate by turning of the computers for one day a week, and really there's no reason to leave the lights on either. Yes we can help the environment. Change. Paradigm. Use words they understand.
In fact, might as well let the workers stay home. It will boost morale and help the environment. Win win. They will leave with a confused look that means you can get back to your game of nethack.
Either that, or use it as an excuse to surf to slashdot during work hours. Which it appears is what you did.
Qxe4
From what I've read, soy-based printer toner/ink isn't that much different. The quality is likely to be less rich (especially for high end prints of brochures on regular paper) but otherwise there shouldn't be too much of a difference.
If anyone needs me, I'll be in the Angry Dome.
... don't replace the toner cartridge at all, and save toner, paper, power, and the manufacturing and disposal costs of the printer. If the managers really want to be green, they can avoid producing all that paperwork.
I used to use WD-40 on the ink tapes. As an added benefit it smells great!
The drum is made of selenium that usually winds in land fills. They make ozone like crazy and when we are done with them we toss them out. Soy based toner totally pointless.
Nope nothing green here move along.
Linux modi 2.6.26-2-parisc
Standard laser-printer toner is made up of tiny specs of carbon black and plastic. When you print with this toner, you're fixing carbon onto paper. Point out how green this is.
Mr. President you ought to know by now nobody is going to do that. The green economy is about feeling like you care without actually doing anything. It's about keeping your margins up and your expenses low.
Marketing!
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
Will your documents be readable in 1 year, 5, 15? What about regularly handled documents in binders in humid environments- does it imprint the opposite page or rub off?
These seem like the prudent questions to be asking.
Those user testimonials are great! I like how all their users synchronized their postings! There are 3 on June 2nd from 11:32 to 11:34, 1 on June 5th, and 5 from June 20th from 12:30 to 12:31.
Hilarious...
Why are you resisting pressure from managers? The more you push one way, the more they'll push back.
A far better approach to managing your managerial stakeholders is to say "Hey, that's a great idea! Let's do an experiment... let's change your cartridges to soy for a few months and see how they go!"
This way even if they don't work, you're seen as a listener rather than a roadblock.
I'm getting a lot of pressure from managers
If you weren't so lazy, you could be a manager. Think of it... you could be advocating baby-seal oil based toner as "green", since seals are predator animals, they must be un-green.
Come on! Rise Up! Demand what's yours!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Let me get this straight...
You build an extremely precise little box out of highly refined metals, circuit boards and PCBs, manufactured from parts made all around the world before being shipped thousands of miles to your local Staples, and you're worried about the half ounce of INK!?!?!
That's like cuttng calories by skipping the cherry on your triple scoop ice cream sundae!
Want to go green? Use CFLs. Replace your shower heads. Bike to work. Email instead of printing. Open windows rather than hit the thermostat. Use GotoMeeting rather than fly. Plant some trees on the South side of your home and office buildings. Buy your food from a local Farmer's Market rather than the mega-mart to avoid 'fresh' food from Argentina or some other place 4,000 miles away in refrigerated containers.
When the ink jet containers themselves are made of soy, and the mfgs standardize their cartridges so that reuse is more feasible, I'll take notice. Otherwise, this flavor of 'green' is idotic.
Buy Soy ink because it's better, lasts longer, or is cheaper and don't delude yourself with false green.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
If you print a lot of green shit. Otherwise I would recommend that you buy cartridges with normal amounts of each color.
nothing better to write
Salty.
Soy doesn't necessarily make the product green. Where is the soy produced, is it genetically modified, what's the carbon imprint of the whole product? How much processing does the soy need to become ink-like, and what chemicals are used along the way?
It might be cool to have soy based toner in your printer, but the overall damage to the environment may be wider and larger. A lot of companies greenwash their products in order to widen their customer base.
The Wikipedia article seems to have some answers. Moving away from petroleum is an advantage.
A backhanded slashvertisement from the Green mujahiddens?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
That is two solutions in one:
1 - any report becomes invisible after a while. I bet Arthur Andersen would have paid a fortune for that feature alone. Besides, anything thicker than an 1 inch when printed is redundant the moment it's sent to the print queue (I just made that up, but feels about right in my experience :-).
2 - the paper can be recycled. Maybe not as printer paper, but scrap. And folded paper planes look much nicer without print on them, I just don't know what soy toner does to the aero dynamics. I suggest a week long study to find out.
On the serious side, thanks. Fade is a feature worth avoiding..
Insert
...is brought to you by Soylent red and Soylent yellow, high energy vegetable concentrates, and new, delicious, Soylent green. The miracle food of high-energy plankton gathered from the oceans of the world.
You are misinformed.
Soy ink is made from a non-food soy that is distinctly different from "regular" soybeans. However, that is used for the oil in the ink, not the pigment, and there is no oil in toner. So it is questionable just what they are doing with that soy in "soy-based" toner.
In any case, back to the subject: you may be right about the soy crops, but the answer to that is simple: stop using Monsanto soy. That is not exactly rocket science.
And as for the Roundup, it needs to be sprayed directly on plants, in order to be absorbed and do its work. Roundup is biodegradable in the extreme: it is broken down into harmless naturally-occurring chemicals shortly after it contacts the soil. That is why so many people found Roundup to be so frustrating: it would kill all the weeds in their yard, but even before they were completely dead, new weeds would start popping up. Because any roundup that did not touch a weed disappeared within a couple of days.
I applaud your concern for the environment (and in particular the non-reproducing crop garbage that corporations have tried to pull), but you should do some research before willy-nilly pointing fingers.
I agree. Baby seal blood coagulates into a rich black color, you really cannot match the contrast it provides. What's more it's 100% biodegradeable and a completely renewable resource! And all seal blood is made from natural component like digested fish-parts, locking carbon into that form rather than letting it decompose and release back into the atmosphere. We've been using Seal Blood Toner for 8 years now and would never go back to oil, why send money to the middle east anyway when we can send it to Alasaka.
At an ag-educated guess, the black pigment for "soy-based toner" comes from burnt soybean *hulls*.
As to the phytoestrogens, some interesting reading that is backed by considerable research:
http://www.soyonlineservice.co.nz/04birthdefects.htm
(Be aware that flaxseed meal has 3 to 4 TIMES as much phytoestrogen as soy, and is sufficient to be somewhat effective as a contraceptive, and to cause birth defects, when used in dog food.)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
While crop seed companies definitely want to keep selling new seeds each year, it's not exactly some evil plan. The high-yield, high-resilience hybrids typically lose many of their benefits in the second generation, and not particularly by design (it's a nice side effect, but it wasn't something seed companies engineered).
Not to mention that many domesticated annuals don't reproduce well in the first place. For example, corn would likely die out in a decade or so if we didn't spend lots of time and effort getting to to seed. And that's not some recent change due to big agribusiness, it's the result of thousands of years of genetic manipulation.
I'm not saying big agribusiness doesn't do some nasty things, but the fact that they sell annual, domesticated crops that don't breed well is not the thing I'd use to point out their harm.
"How is it 'greener', to use *food*, that people and animals might need to eat, or space that you can grow food on?"
This thing is doomed like every single one of those bio-fuels. Because as soon as we stop having enough space to grow our food, it has to go away, or people will die. With the current speed at which humanity grows, versus our efficiency in farming, this state will be reached even quicker than the end of oil.
Sounds like your managers just want to do what managers do most of the time: Go for the quick money/power/greenness/etc-grab, and ignore that it's very stupid in the long run.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
You can improve on this dismal performance by getting a commercial recycling company to refill old cartridges for you, but after a couple of refills the drum is no longer as good as it was, and print quality starts to deteriorate (on the other hand, one drum may be able to print perhaps 50-60000 report printouts or similar.)
Many of the more heavy duty printers use separate toner tanks and drums. This is far more effective at the expense of requiring an IQ in excess of 100 to replace toner. The drum unit may last from around 20000 pages on smaller machines to, say, several hundred thousand on a Kyocera. In Xerox printers I've looked at, the actual toner may account for more than half of the toner tank mass.
Quite simply the best and most effective way to make your printing less environmentally offensive is to go over the entire estate, identify the older machines that use heavy cartridges with a short life, and scrap them. (this will piss off middle managers who probably have them on their desks, but then they wanted it in the first place.) Then do a little homework on actual needs and replace them with something more cost effective. Replacing individual printers with workgroup printers shared among 5-15 people (based on their workload) reduces the carbon footprint per page printed for more than anything else, and tinkering with toner won't be significant in comparison.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Want to go greener ? in any case do NOT increase soy demand.
Please see "we feed the world" you will understand.
(Brazil has become a great soy producer to please US / EU demand. Where does it grow ? They remove the amazonian forest to plant soy, and as soy doesn't grow on their soil, they then have to add plenty of chemicals.)
So green...
Just sayin "First result in Google with this keyword" tells little. Two searches from different Google's data centres can have very different results, especially if the results are either new or not very strongly in their position.
There are times when me and my workmates search at the same time and with the same keyword and from the same room... And some result could well be 4th on one of us, 7th on another and on 2nd or 3rd page on third. So please, if you see some result on the first page of google search, you cold post it and just say "This was found with really quick google search" instead.
-Your friendly neighbourhood SEO guy
(PS. That said, I tried a search "Chicago tribune soy printer" and the first result is apparently the right one for me. It has been removed from the original website already it seems but google cache still has it when I am writing this comment)
(Emphasis mine:)
Bike to work. Email instead of printing. Open windows rather than hit the terminal?! Use GotoMeeting rather than fly.
I think my mind just may have kept going along a tangent, there. I couldn't quite grasp the energy-saving factor until I re-read it.
"Good news, everyone!"
People!
And the beauty is, if a cartridge springs a leak, you can always use the ink to dip your sushi in.
Recycling the whole consumable is possible: http://www.closetheloopusa.com/ actually uses toner to make a wood substitute among other things. They have agreements with many of the printer manufacturers. The aim is zero waste to landfill, and eventually to make printer/photocopier consumables totally recyclable in the sense of returning the materials back to their manufacturers.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
Do you remember the scene in Terminator 2, where young John Connor is speaking with his cyborg protector in Mexico, and they look over to see two kids playing a shoot-em-up game with guns? John says, after a flash of pessimistic insight, "We're not going to make it, are we? Humanity, I mean?" (I'm paraphrasing from memory).
This slashdot posting really evoked similar feelings in me. Pressure from managers to switch to soy-based toners, in an attempt to be greener. There is no world in which this is reasonable. If we are headed for ecological destruction, this obviously will do nothing to ameliorate the result; it's meaningless feel good tripe. If the ecological Armageddon isn't coming, this sort of in-efficiency for the sake of PR and... well, feel good tripe will ruin the economy, and is a good example of the tortuous lack of sense that will haunt us until our death. We, humanity as a whole, seem incapable of approaching any significant rationally. Like John Connor, suddenly fear we aren't going to make it.
The selenium isn't the issue, just as the trace of mercury in CFLs isn't the issue, it's the wastefulness of putting the whole, nonbiodegradable thing into landfills.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
1970, The original design of the famous Rolling Stones Tongue. It's designed in order by Jagger who wasn't satisfied with the logo's presented by his record company. It was designed by John Pasche, a student who got paid 50 pounds to make this design.
The logo represent the thick lips of Mick Jagger with a rebellish attitude of the band.
It was first presented as cover for the album Sticky Fingers of 1971.
This most famous Rock logo is currently owned by the Victoria and Albert Museum in Londen, who paid a bit more than 50,000 pounds for the design.
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Soy Green Toner is people!
We've got to stop them somehow!
I thought for sure you'd tell him to get a crew cut.
I need more colours than just green.
because the vast majority of this crop is based upon a transgenic (GMO) variety, patented by Monsanto, which has made resistant to the action of an herbicide named Roundup (so this soy crop is also known as Roundup Ready).
This herbicide cocktail is killer for biodiversity and a carcinogen (http://www.dontspraycalifornia.org/roundup-cats.html) and reproduction-problem generator (http://www.ehponline.org/realfiles/members/2005/7728/7728.html).
The soy is also a killer not only for the chemicals used to grow it, but because is displacing other crops and activities, and taking down forests to get new cultivable areas; the intensive farming using "direct seeding" techniques, producing early soil exhaustion (http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/10/3727) and contamination, leading the lands used to farm soy unusable for other crops, because of the increasing levels of glyphosate (Roundup) applied.
Soy derived products are not "green".
There are plenty of steps that should be prioritized over soy-based ink:
Once these steps are done (the company will profit from most of them), feel free to consider soy-based toner cartridges.
Stop the brainwash
We tried this at my workplace and initial print quality seemed okay but the price was prohibitive compared to any perceived benefit. We didn't use them long enough to encounter any printout degradation like the anon above reported. A much better approach is to reduce printing overall to save paper.
No statement is true, not even this one.
I am holding out until hemp-based laser toner cartridges are available.
You don't want "user testimonials," so you ask for the here? That should work out well.
Learn to use a fucking comma, people! The sentence should be "The problem is the only information I can find...." There is no reason to place a comma after "is"! Even if you wanted to sound like Shatner you still can't put a comma there. Commas are not "pauses"! They serve a real purpose and can't be added wherever you like.
Soy based toner cartridges are probably ok, but I'd want to see the nutritional composition clearly labeled so we can compare the carbohydrate content with other equipment, such as our roughage-based fax machine.
My son is allergic to soy. It's not as bad as a peanut allergy (those are like sniff it and die) but he does get very sick from soy. I cannot imagine why a company would want to open itself to immense legal liability by forcing employees to use one of the most common allergens.
As the wikipedia article says "The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America estimates soy is among the nine most common food allergens for pediatric and adult food allergy patients"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soy_allergy
Now it doesn't matter if its a real problem, but if you ever have semi-unrelated "employee legal problems" with an employee whom is allergic to soy, and the jury hears about a corporate policy of intentionally exposing that allergic employee... "Yes your honor I did (fill in the blank w/ fireable offense) but I did it because I was miserable due to my medically documented allergy to the soy ink my boss made me use, after all everyone snaps after enough torture, can't blame me"
The other area of immense legal liability is biodegradability. The whole purpose of soy ink is to have it degrade, right? I'm sure the court will love to hear how management insisted that all sexual harassment, discriminatory actions, and tax evasion evidence, was printed using biodegradable link. Basically, using soy inks means any illegal action that was merely an accident or at worst an oversight is now carefully premeditated, because the perpetrator planned ahead to use special weird biodegradable ink. Even if the ink didn't "properly degrade" before the court date, merely using that kind of "sekret agent ink" implies premeditated criminal intent. Even if there is no evidence at all, the fact biodegradable ink was used does indicate that evidence probably was intentionally destroyed.
The final area of concern is frankly you cannot make a workplace cleaner than the biggest slob. See any shared refrigerator. So, all workplaces have some mice, rats, roaches, etc. Maybe you haven't noticed, but trust me, they all do, at one level or another. Now soy is edible. So, as if rats don't like chewing on paper enough as it is... Which also opens areas of legal liability, since after management policy feeds the pests, you force your workers to either work in rodent infested filth (ranging from "merely" asthma problems up to and including fatal hantavirus) or force them to work in areas filled with toxic rat poisons (better hope no employees EVER get any form of cancer or their kids get any form of birth defect).
The whole idea just seems utterly insane from a legal standpoint.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
hey, write up a contract with the manager and have him or her sign it. If going green in this attempt gets you potential finger pointed at you..leading perhaps to you being fired. You have this letter to cover your butt. Make sure a witness is involved.
I dont get all this green movement. it cost too much money. there are scientist in the woodwork coming out with new ways to harness the green gas already.
come up with 10 ideas to go green other than ink. ink is about 30 bucks for inkjets. laser probably more but produces more pages with color. compare the cost, show it to your manager.
Soy is a common allergen. It's about as common as a peanut allergy.
Fortunately where I work upper management wants nothing to do with IT decisions and passes these types of sales pitches to us.
I've enjoyed pissing off salespeople from these "MakeAlgoreRich" companies with statements like, "I care about performance and reliability, I couldn't give a fuck about how much power it uses or even if it needs a smokestack, in fact, if I could make my servers go faster by sending double the power to it or running a smokestack up the roof, I'd do it"
Serves them right for calling my phone :)
Corporatism != Free Market
Is what is presently being used harmful to the environment? What is toner made of at this time (other than a extremely fine and messy powder)?
I'm still waiting for inkjet cartridges with aloe vera.
No sig today...
OP: "The problem is... the reviews all seem to be user testimonials." Isn't this exactly what you'd get from users here?
Well OK, in that case... I'm so happy that each soy cartridge I buy saves a baby seal, and now I don't have to worry about all those pesky greenhouse gasses. I'll feel much better about the environment while I'm out playing hackeysack now.
like someone else said, a waist of good oxygen.
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I think we are all missing the point. Just go back to using paper and pencil.
I would have a problem with soy-based toners. I have a severe intolerance and a slight allergy to soy. My reaction usually consists of a severe migraine lasting 1-3 days which is so painful it makes me pray and wish for death, projectile vomiting, and heart palpitations, jaundice, and fatigue. Certain forms will push me past jaundice and into liver failure. The allergic reaction is usually limited to just hives (I have a scar from the last reaction I had) but in certain concentrations (such as found in margarine) will induce an anaphylactic reaction. Nothing like waking up unable to breathe!
There is an asian market I go to on occasion - it's a mini-mall with lots of really neat stores but they have a few fast food vendors as well. If I go in there when the fast food vendors are really busy I end up with a migraine and some breathing difficulty. Usually I start noticing the symptoms within a few minutes so if the air is that contaminated I just leave and go back another time.
So, the last thing I need is soy-based toner in my office - the HVAC would circulate particulates from the toner throughout the office. I have a Laserjet 4 and a Xerox Phaser 6180 - the 6180 sees relatively heavy use and I can smell the toner pretty strongly from both of them from 5' away when they're running.
I like the idea in principle, but where soy is an allergen it is a really bad idea. I've read statistics claiming that 40% of people are slightly soy-intolerant and may not even realize it (MSG, crisco, and margarine will induce light headaches, and without doing an elimination diet it is hard to I.D. the cause), 3% are more intolerant and/or slightly allergic to it, and .3% are severely intolerant of it. I don't know how accurate those stats are but I know enough people who get headaches from chinese food to think that the stats might be in the right ballpark.
Keeping soy out of my diet is hard enough - I'd rather it not be used for fuels and inks and other uses that would be spraying lots of soy fumes and particulates in the air. There are other, hypoallergenic solutions out there such as canola and palm oils and fats that are slightly more expensive than soy but much cheaper than fossil fuel derivatives, and those costs could become competitive with soy if production is increased.
Unfortunately the Almighty Dollar will win, because it is hard to beat subsidies (socialism) from the producers' perspective. Soy, like corn, is subsidized which makes it extremely profitable to produce.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Genetically Modified Crops aren't greener, they are environmental catastrophes.
Xerox is about to announce a "solid ink" machine capable of 11x17 sizes that is waaaay more environmentally friendly.
Is there anything better than clicking through Microsoft ads on Slashdot?
Or do you really think we can get somewhere without taking one step at a time?
Actually, most geeks are under the faith-based assumption that at some point, this is entirely possible. That Transporter Pads or Jump Drives or simple Teleportation is merely a question of time. It is so inculcated our geek culture that certain things will simply come easy once the elegant solution appears, as if by magic. Further, I think it affects how we view most problems.
Take environmentalism. Clearly the solution is greener products; things that will fit into a sustainable economy. But it's a binary clause; if your entire product can be green, then it should be. Otherwise, who are you fooling!? There is no sense of bootstrapping, of having to replace pieces as you can.
The subset of the culture that subscribes heavily to this stance tends to be against refactoring code, and for simply writing programs wholesale by themselves in their attic. They're against good test procedures and using older technologies because they're not shiny enough. Ironically, they're also the sorts who probably haven't written their own libraries - or even approached the idea. They buy most of their stuff, because whatever their realm of expertise, it's limited in scope. Fix plumbing? Hell no! Drill something, or saw something? What is the point - something you pay for is clearly going to be better, and in the end that arbitrary sense of idealistic quality is all that matters.
I hope that as we move forward we get more geeks like you, value_added, who recognize that it's not about suddenly being in Nirvana. It's about constantly changing the little bits that are pain points once any better solution becomes available, rather than holding out for some mythical day brought about in some opaque fashion wherein everything is just right of it's own accord.
In the end it's simple economics; the time-value of progress suggests that a little 'money' or 'value' now, and a little later, and a little later will yield a total greater value than a simple lump sum at the end.
[Ego]out
Have your managers watch "The Future of Food" (google it), and how thousands of North American farms are forced to grow genetically modified Soy crops instead of natural and varied food/plant species and they may realize that while it's greener, it's not necessarily the most moral or genetically diverse thing to be doing.
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
Tofu low: order replacement
I usually get constipated a few days after consuming them.
"You can't really dust for vomit" --Nigel Tufnel
It isn't so much that they sell it, but the way they have sold it. They tricked farmers in developing nations into using their "higher-yield" crops, which in turn promised higher profits to the farmers. Who then found out, to their dismay, that the seed would not germinate.
Nearly all the extra profits went out the window due to the requirement of purchasing new seed each season.
I was only joking about the phytoestrogens.
This is the first I have heard that phytoestrogens may mimic real estrogens in humans. Most sources say that there is no evidence that phytoestrogens have any hormonal effect.
Well, that'll teach you :)
Phytoestrogens are structurally similar enough to mimic animal/human hormones, which is why they're used in menopause-relief folk medicines. The reduced fertility effect has long been known in sheep, but has not yet been seriously looked at in other species (other than some studies that show a markedly reduced sperm count). However, some of us dog breeders have noticed that diets containing flaxseed reduce fertility to about 50%, vs. the species norm of ~85%, and birth defects appear that are not otherwise seen.
The wiki has other links re fertility studies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoestrogens
Info from various studies (PDF):
http://cot.food.gov.uk/pdfs/phytoreport0503
A Handy Chart -- note the extreme difference between flax, soy, and just about everything else:
http://www.dietaryfiberfood.com/phytoestrogen.php
Consider that neither flaxseed nor soy are edible in the raw state, and whether man evolved to eat such foods...
See also http://www.dietaryfiberfood.com/phytoestrogens-hormones
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I've heard that baby seal blood toner is better.
It is, but it tends to attract the land sharks.
And if your company is anything like mine, you've got way too many of those already.
Interesting. I'll note then that this "solution" will not decrease this particular environmental impact. If the printing quality is worth it, the recycle center will have no way to know the difference, and must treat the soy product like the conventional one! (not that they are about to sort individual pieces of paper by hand anyways)
The only way it could decrease this environmental cost would be if everyone was using it. (assuming recycling the new stuff doesn't result in its own batch of nasty chemicals)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
...might be to use your supplier/toner provider's recycling program and when the life cycle of the printer is up, to potentially switch to a solid ink printer instead.
I started to migrate the old company (80 offices) I worked for over to the Xerox Phaser series when we decommissioned old equipment or built a new office (the 7750, 85XX, and 88XX are the models I'm most familiar with). The toner is paraffin wax shaped blocks and dye. Almost next to no packaging and what is there is recyclable.
When we started experimenting with new printers (especially so with the solid ink), we borrowed a unit from the local distributor and tested it in our department for a week to make sure it would meet the basic requirements, then moved it to a more demanding group in the office to see if they approved. Our metric weighed in the factors of base cost of the printer, cost/page (which factors in supplies and average maintenance over a set lifetime), quality of print, efficiency of volumes of jobs, and other day to day tasks.
If anyone else want's to know more about our testing and long term use, let me know and I can give a more detailed breakdown.
***
If your company is dead set on the soy toner, have your printer/toner supplier track down some samples to try out on a few printers and see how they work.
I'm not sure about printing because I've never used it for that, but I've seen soy based paint and concrete stain used with magnificent results. Traditional stains and paints leach nasty chemicals for years after application so going to a soy or clay based product will greatly reduce the airborne toxins (aka VOCs) in your living environment.
It interesting to be called misinformed when the reply contains dubious info. Round does NOT biodegrade into harmless chemicals. Simply viewing the documentary the Future of Food or the World According to Monsanto would dispell that.
You can find these films here
http://www.hulu.com/watch/67878/the-future-of-food
and here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_OJcPKEYDE
Round Up is not allowed to state that its biodegradable in France and many European countries because it's not.
I heavily question who Jane Q Public works for because it's like straight out a corporate sales brochure.
The second part about it being some different soy - how is this exactly? And how does one know they aren't getting the GMO soy in the ink? You didn't really address the subject. 90 percent of soy grown is GMO and Monsanto is actively keeping other seeds out of the hands of farmers. So how do they choose not to grow it when they are forced into this by a lack of other options.
Also the GMO crops have never been fully studied and neither has round up because of corruption in the FDA and government. But everything that has been studied has shown why Monsanto wanted to avoid these studies, because none of it is good for human health.
So here are some more links so you can really be informed.
this first straight from the epa with prolonged exposure to these herbicides leading to kidney damage and reproductive effects.
http://www.epa.gov/safewater/dwh/c-soc/glyphosa.html
http://www.naturescountrystore.com/roundup/index.html
http://www.for-wild.org/download/roundupmyth/roundupmyth.html
My university's lab printers are for the most part HP LaserJets, model number 4200 or 9100 or something.
How do they rank in your scale?
As I investigated the environmental impact of our computer-lab printing for a recent class (last quarter), the issue is still fresh in my mind, and your comment reminded me of that line of work.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
And if it's too red, you can always mix in a bit of your soul to darken it.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Very interesting. Thank you for those sources. I was also unaware of the level of phytoestrogens in flax.
How is it possible for so-called experts to claim that phytoestrogens have "no demonstrated hormonal effect" in humans? Seems like grounds for a class-action suit.
I think a great deal of that rests with the soybean producers council, whatever it's called, which has promoted soy as the perfect substitute for every other food.
BTW soy baby formula is implicated in the development of allergies to various plants and pollens, which is no big surprise since soy protein is a broad-spectrum allergin. Likely also why some babies get colicky, since it makes the gut produce excess mucus (a reaction to irritation).
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Who cares if the "print quality" is good, considering the drivel most people print? Does it really matter if some middle manager's inexplicably printed email isn't as "good" as the laser printer? He's going to throw it out within the next few days anyway. Most of the stuff people print is for one-off nonsense where it doesn't need to look good or last any significant period of time. If you're printing product brochures or marketing material, your office printer isn't what you should be using in the first place. I'm not really sure I understand the problem.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
Then we should consider making toner out of that toxic sludge instead of edible soy beans...
A pest for those who are allergic to Soya, unable to visit the newsstand without getting into a shock reaction?
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
You like to use your prints as self-healing patches?
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Hey folks... Man, I'm reading these post and the differences are stunning. Some people go into this idea of SoyPrint with a question and willingness to learn and others go in with no real facts and make judgements. I have a HP 1300n Laserjet printer on my desk and it is currently printing with SoyPrint toner cartridges bought from the manufacturer. It prints the same, costs the same , and everything I have printed has been really nice quality. I also had questions in the beginning- I asked questions instead of making claims I wasn't sure of. This is why so often people looks poorly on people that are "too green". The company brought this product to market right along the same time our president made constant remarks to reducing our dependency on foreign oil. So to answer you folks that say its not enough of an impact- to our office of over 20 printers and use of 50+ toners a year it is. We save 150+ liters of oil by switching over!! I can teach my child how we do all we can to conserve this place for him and his family. So although i'm not getting paid to promote these SoyPrint cartridge I think it is important to GET THE FACTS before making any claims.
Look young man, almost every newspaper and magazine that is printed is printed with Soy or
another vegetable based ink. None of the large commercial printers (in the US anyway) use the old lead or other toxic chemical based inks. It is about time that laser printers and ink jet printers caught up to that standard. So buy one and try it in one of your laser printers. Like many other things in IT, you buy one and only one and try it.