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New Eco-Friendly Printer Just Needs Coffee Grinds

post #1 of 9
8/28/09 at 8:54am
Thread Starter 
New Eco-Friendly Printer Just Needs Coffee Grinds
www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,543660,00.html





I don't know how practical this is or how well it prints, but I really like the idea. For people like me, who rarely print and drink quite a bit of coffee, it might just be a good option.




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Coffee-drinking computer users may soon have a new use for their old coffee grinds if a new eco-friendly printer hits the market.
 

Featured in the Greener Gadgets Design Competition, the RITI printer apparently uses coffee or tea dregs to create computer printouts.

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post #2 of 9
8/28/09 at 10:27am
How neat! But how does it work? Are the coffee grinds used as the ink or the power?  It's definitely very space age looking.
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post #3 of 9
9/5/09 at 9:11pm
I like the idea of recycling trash to power electronics.  I guess we'll have to wait and see what the quality is like before we get to excited

Alicia
http://ecomaidsofla.com/blog
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post #4 of 9
9/9/09 at 9:38am
Thread Starter 
OK, so this turns out to be not such a practical item after all. Turns out you have to manually move the cartridge. Check out this review:

Quote:
If the RITI coffee printer existed as a real-world product, you could do just that. The design calls for spent grounds to be poured into a cartridge and for the printing mechanism to be manually moved back and forth to create an image. I think the whole "manual labor" thing takes the eco-friendly concept a bit too far, but if old coffee could actually be used for ink I would be all for it. It would also infuse a delightful scent into your resume that would give you the edge on any job application. Plus you could lick your documents if you were ever really jonesing.

Maybe someone else will take the coffee ground idea and at least save us from ink cartridges.
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post #5 of 9
9/9/09 at 10:11am
Hi green-bohemia, You got me to go look at the base article!

Turns out the web site www.core77.com/greenergadgets/ has a whole series of rather silly and impractical ideas. 
1) the manual coffee printer - DOA
2) the cardboard computer case  - they say it environmentally friendly but when your house burns down and insurnace does not cover it due to utilization of this hazardous idea?
3) a traffic light that also shows environmental conditions - interesting but I would prefer that people watch the road and bikers - not be reading (or trying to) some small sign 
4) standby monsters - a gadget to stick over the LED on electronics to remind you to turn it off - as if it would make a difference - either you will or you won't
5) Bware water meter - not too bad but most people may end up with more wasted water from leaks than it causes you to save. I read the water meters to the house and garden daily - good enough for me
6) Thermal imaging device (camera) to identify heat loss areas around the house - a fine idea but I have never seen a cheap IR camera - industrially they are commonly used - if I could find a cheap one I would definitely buy it
7) Compostall - replacement for the kitchen garbage disposal - would do inefficiently what the city sewage system already does.  

To be green I believe things must be practical, do something useful and hopefuly cost effective as well. Some of the items listed are just another way to waste money.
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post #6 of 9
9/9/09 at 3:17pm
Thread Starter 
Hey Russ,

Good stuff. Those are good examples of the difference there often is between ideas and the real world. I think a lot of these things aren't even created yet - just ideas. Well, serves as entertainment anyway :)
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post #7 of 9
9/10/09 at 12:27pm
I think it is pretty cool.  Might be something fun for schools, teachers drink lots of coffee and kids make great free labor :)  Besides, classrooms go through a lot of ink just printing out outlines, notes, etc. which is all text and doesn't need fancy color and the such.
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post #8 of 9
9/10/09 at 2:56pm
Thread Starter 
Yeah, I guess that's true. I have a three-year-old boy who always wants to play with the printer and a daughter who always wants to print things that we don't consider important enough to warrant ink and new sheets of paper. Something like this - if it were cost effective - could be fun. I bet, though, that it would cost a pretty penny.
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post #9 of 9
9/11/09 at 6:41am
Speaking of kids, did you see the eco-piggy bank on the concept site? You plug it into the outlet, then plug your kid's toy into the pig nose and they deposit coins to purchase play time on the electronic toy (game consoles was my best bet for usage) teaching them to save money and limit their electricity use.  Of course as a kid I would have just taken out the plug and deposited the same coin over and over, but in concept it is cool!
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