Skip to main content

What would you think of this? You put a pile of used paper into your printer – old printouts in black ink on white paper. You want to print a full-colour diagram on light-blue paper. The printer prints ... but without ... wasting resources. Without using water, the old paper is broken down to its fibres (better than any shredder could do) and put together again – in your chosen colour and thickness, and then it's printed.

I would believe that to be a magical development. But I'm late, because this device already exists, as this video shows: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp-AZ6psL0c

In this case, the printer is not so much a "device" than it is a "machine", as big as a steam train and as expensive as an upper class limousine. Luckily only as a Japanese upper class limousine – because this steam train was made by one of our favourite Japanese vendors: Epson.

In my opinion, it is audacious to take the paper and printing industry on – this compares to a fight between Tesla and the oil industry. Did you notice the huge ink cartridges in the YouTube video? Just crazy.

Of course, there is nothing that anyone of us could be selling tomorrow. But it will come, and it will solve a massive environmental, cost and time problem. I just wish I will not have to choose between a Tesla and Epson's "paper mill" – because both need require space the size of a garage.

So, Epson, please: make the thing smaller, less expensive, and get that market. We can wait those few years.