Slashdot Mirror
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?"
Is there anything you can't do with Soy?
Make it taste good....
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!
Since when do astroturfers search before posting their advertisement?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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