Virtual Toner, Ink and Machine Pool

Consider making a virtual toner ink and machine pool resource.

Why: - Some tonners and printers are expensive. Machines may cost hundreds or thousands of pounds. I toner or set of inks could be in excess of £250 for some machines. Some toners and inks are low cost and tend to be over ordered and not used. From time to time printers and photocopiers are replaced or become redundant. These machines may still have a life and tone or ink, which would normally get treated as waste. The waste and WEEE process has a cost.

The logic:- If the “normal” is an audited fleet of “efficient and effective” printers and photocopiers in all offices and volume student areas, with low cost consumables supplies that easy to obtain through existing channels exist.

Then a virtual pool of unused, unwanted toners and inks can be set up as virtual community on a website to support current machines. People could post their unused resources to a list. If the offer is not taken after a period of time, then the resource may truly be redundant and suitable for donation or recycling.

A tangible pool of used and useable efficient and effective machines, are kept as a pooled resource, this keeps the machine replacement cost low and avoids new orders. Low cost toner or ink must be available and easy to obtain through existing channels. Users of this tangible pool can also access the virtual pool of unused, unwanted toners and inks.

“Efficient and effective” printers and photocopiers needs to be defined as this could be: can double side, Energy star, auto power down/off, still made, common with lots of low cost consumables, etc.

Post consumer recycled paper, ink and toner

On the 5th June 2009, World Environment Day, LSBU became the London Regional Centre of Excellence and the first European Capital City to join the UNESCO RCE network. http://www1.lsbu.ac.uk/efs/conference/RCE_launch.shtml

To coincide with this event, LSBU switched to using 80% post consumer recycled paperin all office functions and 100% post consumer paper on our corporate stationery. The cost difference to move from virgin paper substrates to post-consumer substrates was neutral.

Prior to the 5th June 2009, we were blind-testing both papers with post consumer recycled content around the campuses. The outcome of the blind testing was there were no complaints on the quality of the paper and the paper worked will in all office machines (printers, fax, and photocopiers).

On the 5th June 2009, the announcement of the paper switch over, (and when we activated an auto switch paper function with Office Depot) some users were critical of using this new paper, but most welcomed the change as “Practicing what we teach”.

To celebrate the first year of the LSBU RCE and World Environment Day 2010, we are considering switching branded ink and toner with office depot own brand and remanufactured products, which we are currently doing some cost benefit work on.

JISC papers by Peter James and Lisa Hopkinson

Can I draw your attention to two excellent JISC papers by Peter James and Lisa Hopkinson.

They are on the Higher Education Environmental Performance Improvement (HEEPI) Good Campus website http://www.goodcampus.org/files/index.php?siteID= , which I feel are relevant to our scope of JISC Greening ICT - Printing Efficiently & Greener and should be considered?

September 2009 - Sustainable ICT Procurement in Higher Education
27^th May 2009 - Energy Efficient Printing and Imaging in Further and Higher Education