Given the development of information technology and communication in these days and ages, printers still play an essential role in working place and at home as well. You might use printers in your office, and now you also want to purchase one for convenience right in your home.
While looking for the best choice, have you ever thought of a green printer to save our Mother Earth? You know that using printers means paper, ink, and electricity wastage which could damage our environment and produce carbon footprint.
Thus, eco-friendly printers would be genuinely the sensible solution for those global issues. Let’s step back and look at some helpful recommendations and suggestions below, they are likely to encourage and stimulate you to buy an environmentally friendly printer right away!
See also:
What Is an Eco-Friendly Printer? Key Factors to Choose an Eco-Printer
An All-In-One or Multifunction Printer (MFP)
The first thing is that you should consider a multifunction printer instead of individual units. In addition to printing, an all-in-one printer can serve copying, scanning, faxing in only one single unit. Not only to help you reduce carbon footprint, MFP but also optimizes work efficiency because you do not have to walk or run around the room to do many tasks.
Moreover, all-in-one printers can minimize energy consumed during the operation because you use only one machine. Overhead support costs of MFP are also much lower than a single function printer performing a single task.
Although an MFP alone is a bit exorbitantly expensive, compared with one individual unit, it is still cheaper than the amount of money you have to spend to buy all single machines at once.
Certifications: Environment Choice, Energy Star, Blue Angel
Printers that are acknowledged with Environment Choice, Energy Star, and Blue Angel standards are almost power-saving units. For example, many printers could automatically turn off or switch into sleep mode at a certain length of time, leading to remarkable operational energy reduction.
Standby modes can be also activated if the print job is completed and then help you reduce the electricity bills over time. For big companies that own dozens of printers scattered in the office rooms, this function can be a key in diminishing energy consumption.
Statistically speaking, it is estimated by HP that eco-friendly printers complying Energy Star save 15-30% power consumed in the printing process.
Automatic Duplexing
Duplexing in this situation means using both sides of a sheet in printing. Normally, if you want printouts to be inked on both sides, you have to physically re-feed each sheet back into the printing unit.
Luckily, some eco-friendly printers have a programmable duplexing mode that enables them to automatically print on two sides without manual support. The way to operate is to run a page through the paper feed twice then turn the sheet over and print on its reverse side.
Duplexing printers that help you cut paper usage in half is obviously a sustainable measure.
One Color in One Cartridge
Printers with separate ink cartridges for individual colors, instead of all colors in one cartridge, can chop away a vast amount of waste and save you from constantly replenishing the ink cartridge supply.
Used ink cartridges can be also recycled, which is more environmentally friendly than ending up at the landfills. Furthermore, you can find some printers that have refillable ink cartridges to not only save our environment but also lighten your supply expenses.
Top 5 Best Eco-Friendly Printers
1. Epson WorkForce WF-3540
This 4 in 1 Epson’s Workforce printer offers built-in options including print, copy, scan, and fax.
There is also an automatic duplexing mode, and printing speed is impeccable without a compromise on quality.
In terms of the eco-friendly aspect, it uses 70% less power than its laser counterparts and saves approximately 40% in comparison with other printers. Plus, Wi-Fi, Ethernet, AirPrint, Google Cloud Print, and Epson Connect would support the easy mobile printing process. You can set up and run the printer with ease right in the beginning.
2. Brother Printer MFCJ6920DW
The multifunction Brother printer helps you deal with large scale printing. It is a basically 4-in-1 printing unit with a two-sided printing feature for paper saving. Navigation also becomes more easily thanks to a touchscreen color LCD. The printer goes with Brother Cloud Apps for creative printing, too.
With 20ppm (pages per minute) in color printing and 22ppm in black printing, the Brother printer is among the printers with the highest printing speed. It performs well with Landscape Print Technology that stores and feeds papers in a horizontal orientation for a compact footprint.
3. Brother HL-2270DW
This product belongs to the top of Amazon’s best-seller and receives a lot of positive reviews from customers.
As a compact laser printer, it has excellent quality and it can print off 27 pages per minute. In addition to its quality and printing speed, the unit supports a built-in wired and wireless network to share more easily.
Also, this compact printer is set up with a Toner Save mode to save on ink. And a supporting app called Cortado Workplace is available to assist mobile printing.
4. Brother Printer MFCJ450DW
The next name is Brother again. It is a color inkjet multifunction home printer that can print off up to 33ppm in black and 27ppm in color.
The printer also has common features namely duplexing printing and free Cloud apps. Those apps allow users to capture, convert, and share documents directly from the printer. Specially, you do not have to feed papers manually thanks to an automatic document feeder (ADF) during copying, faxing, and printing processes.
5. Canon Office and Business MX922
The last eco-friendly printer comes from giant Canon. As its name suggests, Canon Office and Business MX922 is ideal in the office working environment. Super-fast connect would help transfer data as soon as plugging the cable into your PC.
The integrated printer has an automatic document feeder to support copy, scan, and fax without loading documents one page at a time. Added to this is auto-mode for printing 2 sides of the page, so there is no need to turn sheets over manually.
Like other printers, this one provides mobile device printing for creativity and convenience.
Tips to Use Printer in An Eco-Friendly Manner
In addition to choosing a green printer, you should consider nitty-gritty you can do as an individual to lessen the environmental impacts caused by those machines.
Reuse or Recycle Printouts
If printouts are back to you in the end, let’s utilize those papers for other purposes if possible. Or you can collect all of them day by day and send them to collecting places so that used papers can be recycled.
Format Your Papers in Smaller Margins
Margin formatting aims to maximize the usage of space on the papers. The more space the text covers, the fewer sheets are needed. Utilizing space would definitely reduce a large number of blank papers.
Print on Both Sides of The Page
As automatic duplexing printers are mentioned in the previous part, this is quite the same. This time, you format the paper by yourself rather than by the unit. Half papers can be saved thanks to this useful solution.
Pick Fonts That Use Less Ink
Researches have shown that certain fonts use less ink and operational costs than other counterparts. Because of simple structures and shapes, those fonts do not need much ink and energy. Sans serif fonts are the case.
Green Printing Services
In the context of sustainable development, many businesses also want to go green. They use recycled papers and offer some printing services that produce biodegradable banners and posters. Those products will not take up much place in landfills also.
Conclusion
So, the combination of the best eco-friendly printers and green printing methods may be a perfect solution for our environment. It is challenging for me to single out the most impressive products because I see all impeccable. Make your own choice!
I hope you are satisfied with the helpful information provided and think of them when you intend to buy a sustainable printer. A multifunction printer with automatic duplexing mode and separate ink cartridges is good, adding reliable certification would be ideal.
And if you are questioning about any detail in the article, feel free to leave your comments in the box. We are willing to answer.
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