Q2612a cartridge
ink technology, computers & printers

The Paperless Office

We vaguely remember someone promising the day soon would come we would go paperless. E-commerce, e-banking, e-payments of all kinds, working in concert with electronic mail and electronic documents of all kinds would render paper obsolete—like the “tin” can and the internal combustion engine. The “paperless revolution” would contribute substantially to the planet’s rescue and recovery, because lumberjacks would stop stripping old growth forests for paper; and because computers use very little energy and we would retire our printers, greenhouse gasses would diminish. We vividly remember the promise of the Great Paperless Revolution, and we welcomed it.

At the time, we admittedly wondered, “Paperless? Really?” The greenerati assured us, however, ponderously and gravely, “Oh, yes, completely paperless. Everything encoded, encrypted, and electronic. All perfectly safe and 100% eco-friendly.”

The Great Paperless Revolution promised other planet-saving miracles, too. Via the law of unintended consequences, we also would reduce introduction of toxic wastes and plastics into fragile ecosystems, because abandoning our printers would reduce our need for printer cartridges, which in turn would mean far fewer of the little plastic toxin-spreaders in landfills. The few cartridges we would continue to use for the exceptionally rare printed documents we required would become infinitely reusable, and manufacturers happily would recycle them for us.

The Great Paperless Revolution alone could save our delicate mother Earth.

Still, we wondered, “Paperless? Really?”

The  anti-revolution

Part of the pundits’ prediction came true. Electronic technology made document production so frighteningly simple that everyone does it. Spell-check and grammar check made every alumnus of fourth grade believe he or she could win a Pulitzer Prize—as if they gave prizes for “Best Memo of 1998.” And a new, thoroughly unprecedented phenomenon emerged: As soon as someone created an electronic document, everyone wanted to print it. Could not just read and appreciate the memo masterpiece on the LCD screen; had to have a souvenir copy on paper.

Even today, as the printer lights up, whirrs to life, and drives the carriage jetting back and forth, we wonder again: Paperless? Really?

People feel compelled to print everything, serendipitously enriching the printer manufacturers, who designed their ink cartridges to run out at every critical juncture.

Some of the printing seems downright comical. People print e-mails, which they keep in notebooks as if CD’s and hard drives were so fragile they could not possibly secure valuable information like “meeting. Wednesday. 3 pm.” We feel pretty confident the pundits expected people would behave logically, transferring the contents of their e-mails to their electronic calendars, which they would program to remind them of Wednesday’s meeting. But something about “the hard copy” gives people substantial reassurance they crave. That same need for reassurance must inspire people to bring both their 3-ring binders and their laptops to the Wednesday meetings.

So, still we wonder, “Paperless? Really?”

Trees in Oregon. Cartridges in Tujunga.

All the time we keep deforesting Oregon for the sake of reassurance, we also keep filling-up landfills with printer ink cartridges. If we had gone paperless, we could have gone inkless, too, saving a great deal of time, chemicals, and electricity. While the paperless revolution has buried us under more documents than ten old electrics ever could have produced, only 2% of printer cartridges are recycled, remanufactured, or reused in any way. Paperless? Printerless? Really?

Now, we wonder “When” and we fervently hope the answer will come back “Soon!”

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