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60 percent of inkjet printer ink is thrown away
As
much as 60 percent of the ink contained in a typical inkjet cartridge
is wasted, when printers ask users to throw away half-full cartridges,
according to research commissioned by Epson.The printer company
commissioned research laboratory TUV Rheinland to measure how much ink
is used up and how much remains in an inkjet cartridge when the printer
claims it’s out of ink. The study revealed vast amounts of wastage: no
matter which printer you choose, around half the ink you pay for goes
unused. On average, inkjet printers provide an ink efficiency of just
58 percent when used for photo printing purposes and 47 percent when
used for printing business documents such as presentations.
Research
company TUV Rheinland performed comparative tests on eight different
printers from well-known brands such as HP, Canon, Brother, Lexmark,
Epson and Kodak. The Kodak EasyShare model that was included in the
test proved to have an ink efficiency level of just 40 percent. By
contrast, models made by Epson and one HP inkjet, were shown to have
efficiency levels of around 80 percent.The printers that scored
particularly poorly were multi-ink cartridge models. This category
included printers in which colours are supplied in a single unit of
cyan, magenta and yellow as well as six-colour printers that have a
five-colour ink cartridge. The printers each printed as many sample
pages as possible until one of the colours was exhausted. The residual
amount of ink that was unused was then recorded.TUV Rheinland’s Hartmut
Mueller-Gerbes explained that tests were carried out separately for
photo printing and for business printing. The sample photo prints used
were chosen at random by a focus group while a typical PowerPoint
presentation was used as the sample document for the business-focused
efficiency test.Here, explained Mueller-Gerbes, one colour tends to
dominate as a presentation will have a particular colour theme “such as
the light magenta used in our example or the light cyan used in my
presentation”. Because of this, business printing tends to drain one
colour faster than any other and the printer alerts the user that
replenishment ink is needed.
Epson
commissioned the tests to measure the environmental impact of ink waste
and to back up its assertion that it’s less wasteful – as well as
cheaper – to use a printer that has individual colour tanks.
Epson sells inkjet printers only that have separate ink cartridges for
each colour. This means that when one colour runs out, the consumer can
replace a single cartridge, rather than having to replace all the
colours when only one has been used up, as is the case with multi-ink
cartridges.The weight of the inkjet cartridges was taken before and
after the tests to ascertain how much ink was in it. They also compared
with the weight of an empty cartridge to arrive at a figure for the ink
on its own. The cartridges were chemically cleaned to ensure the weight
of the cartridge alone was factored in.However, as conference attendees
were quick to point out, the tests Epson commissioned did not measure
the cost to the consumer, the number of pages each printer was able to
produce before running out of colour and did not factor in the amount
of ink used up by the cleaning cycle that printers routinely perform.
This last factor is something industry experts believe accounts for a
significant amount of ink waste.
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