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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?"
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?
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?
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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."
People!
Standard toner consists of a pigment suspended in a petroleum-based polymer. As such, toner has the environmental impact of any other consumable plastic, including off-gassing and the potential exhaustion of a non-renewable resources. The real problem, however, is that toner must be removed from pulp when recycling paper. The toner removal process uses toxic chemicals and produces a non-biodegradable and non-recyclable sludge waste product.