XEROX & PITNEY BOWES PITCH IN WITH "GREEN" ADVISE

[Anonymous]

http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/ci_10521321
Xerox, Pitney Bowes pitch in with ‘green’ advice
Two
local titans in the office products industry, Pitney Bowes Inc. and
Xerox Corp., are sharing some of their patents with the general
public.Rather than revealing how to build a postage meter or a color
copier, however, the patents might enable someone to remove toxic waste
from soil and water more quickly or use less ink in a printer.

The
companies are part of Eco-Patent Commons, a global effort to use
existing technology to protect the environment.Other partners in
Eco-Patent Commons are IBM Corp., Nokia, Bosch, DuPont, Sony and the
Geneva-based World Business Council for Sustainable
Development.Norwalk-based Xerox has pledged 11 patents to the venture.
Those patents make it possible to trim the process of removing toxic
waste from soil and water from years to months.According to Xerox, the
traditional way to treat sites where organic solvents have spilled
involves first drilling a well to pump out the ground water and treat
it, then applying a vacuum to the soil to remove and treat vapors.

Xerox’s
2-PHASE Extraction system uses a stronger vacuum that simultaneously
removes both the soil vapors and water – in the form of mist. Xerox
said it can reduce overall remediation times by as much as 80
percent.”We developed the 2-PHASE technology more than 15 years ago to
help us remediate sites more quickly and at less expense,” said
Patricia Calkins, Xerox’s vice president of environment, health and
safety. “We believe it will be a valuable tool for others, such as the
local dry cleaners or gas stations, who need to clean up volatile
organic compounds.””Xerox has made a long-term commitment to
environmentally responsible operations,” she said. “The Eco-Patent
Commons gives us the opportunity to share what we have learned.”

Xerox
pledges the patents to Eco-Patent Commons, which is a repository of
patents and other intellectual property made available to anyone free
of charge, Xerox spokeswoman Elissa Nesbitt said.”Essentially,
companies retain ownership. They simply pledge not to assert their
rights to prevent others from using the patents to provide
environmental benefit,” she said.

Stamford-based Pitney Bowes, a
mailing systems and postage meter company, contributed patents for a
product that makes mail scales last longer and protects them from
overloads, and an ink jet printer that reduces waste ink and extends
the life of ink cartridges.

“We saw participation in Eco-Patent
Commons as an opportunity to be leaders in promoting the spread of
environmentally conscious technologies,” said Brian Lemm, senior
corporate counsel at Pitney Bowes and a board member of Eco-Patent
Commons. “We think it will provide access to technologies that we would
not otherwise have access to.”

Membership in Eco-Patent Commons
has a positive public relations impact, said Mark Nowotarski, president
of Markets, Patents & Alliances LLC, a patent consulting firm in
Stamford.”By making these technologies available, they present the
image to the public that they are supporting environmental causes,”
said Nowotarski, a former corporate research and development fellow for
Danbury-based Praxair Inc., a producer of industrial gases.

At
Praxair, Nowotarski devised 17 patents for environmentally friendly
technologies. He said he found a way to take freon out of the computer
manufacturing process and invented a method to reduce by half the
carbon dioxide emissions in the freezing of food. Nowotarski also
worked on ways to clean municipal waste water with ozone instead of
chlorine, he said.

Pitney Bowes and Xerox are involved in
environmentally sound practices. Pitney Bowes Inc. claimed to have
saved almost $3 million in fuel costs over the past two years by
cutting down its customer service trips. The company promotes car
pools, telecommuting and shortened work weeks among its Fairfield
County employees to save gasoline.

At its world headquarters in
Stamford, Pitney Bowes also invested several million dollars in
renovations that included recycling of construction waste and the use
of eco-friendly building materials and energy efficient lighting.Xerox,
the world’s largest producer of copiers, is among a rising number of
companies that are turning off lights in empty rooms and cutting back
on excess copying and printouts to save energy.

[Author]

October 16, 2008 at 11:15 AM