Deprinter

I came across this cool video about a technology product called Deprinter which removes the ink from printed paper and gets it back as almost new. 

Quite fascinated by the scope of the deprinter as it revolutionises the way in which we have consumed paper in the past. 

If we think about the long term effect, if this works, a deprinter can allow each sheet of paper to be reused up to 10 times. This means the paper consumption levels will come down by 90% and it might disrupt the paper industry drastically. 

Paper industry is the fourth largest polluter in the list of industries contributing to carbon emission wastage around the world.

Deprinting should help cut down that level of pollution drastically.

Barak Yekutiely, chairman and CEO of Reep Technologies, an Israel based company, that invented deprinters, calls this as ‘circular printing’.  

The initial focus appears to be on the enterprise segment as the consumption is the highest in the offices.

Deprinting might be a standard feature that we will see in the future printers – one option to print and another option to deprint – or even simpler, future printers might just accept any paper (printed or otherwise), if it was already printed, it might prompt you to confirm, and once confirmed, will deprint it and print again.

If adopted on a large scale, it should disrupt the print industry and hence is a remarkable technology to be closely watched in the years to come.