I wanted to post this entry today because I am excited that HP's Imaging and Printing Group is making some significant announcements around their portfolio of environmental printing solutions. HP today unveiled a series of products, tools, services and initiatives that help customers minimize their environmental impact when it comes to imaging and printing.

We believe these Eco Solutions are industry-leading and in many cases, represent significant improvements of our products and solutions on many environmental fronts. HP has always cared about green issues and the environment. In fact, most large companies want to look green - to cover themselves with a green flag. However, I believe HP has gone further than most because we can point to really tangible things we have implemented or are in the process of implementing.

Here are some of the key announcements:

HP Eco Highlights  The company’s is debuting new HP Eco Highlights label on two LaserJet printers.  The new label from HP makes it easy for customers to identify HP products with environmental attributes-

• HP LaserJet P4015x,
• LaserJet P4515x, and
• LaserJet P4515xm (the P4515xm is EMEA only) as well as the
• HP Deskjet D2545.

These new LaserJet products and the Deskjet will be the FIRST HP products to include the new Eco Highlights label. It makes it easy for customers to identify HP products with environmentally preferable features and will be used company-wide across all products segments. The Eco Highlights label will appear in places where customers typically look for information on HP’s offerings, such as packaging, the Web and data sheets. 

HP Printer Auto-on/Auto-off 

This is HP's next breakthrough in Instant-On technology.    The   printer powers off on its own after inactivity (using less than one watt of power) and powers back on when it senses activity

HP Carbon Footprint Calculator for printing

This calculator allows customers to compare the carbon footprint of their existing printer fleet to newer models to understand how they can reduce their carbon footprint on the environment. The calculator looks at printer energy and paper use, the carbon impact of usage and energy spend based on geography. Look for it online towards the end of June or contact our sales team to work with you to build out some estimated costs.

Clear Packaging Design

On high-end HP LaserJet printers HP will, on average, cut the volume of packaging materials in half. HP is the first in the technology industry to apply this method to printing products which eliminates the need for an outer corrugated box and extensive foam packaging. The outer plastic is made from the same recyclable materials as plastic milk jugs, and customers will have less packaging to manage when they receive their products. HP will use it to ship recently introduced products such as the HP LaserJet M5035x MFP.

HP Paper Policy

Building on its legacy of environmental leadership, HP is pledging to reduce the environmental impact of the papers that the company buys, uses, and sells by establishing one of the most comprehensive paper policies in the industry – spanning both papers sold to customers and those used by HP in packaging, collateral and office-printing. 

With some of these enhancements, we have goals to improve the overall energy efficiency of HP's ink and laser printing products by 40% by 2011 and to surpass 250 million cumulative HP inkjet and LaserJet cartridges recycled in 2008, thereby helping the company reach its goal of recovering two billion pounds of computing and printing equipment by 2010.

HP’s Imaging and Printing Group is enabling enterprise customers to save power and paper. HP has helped several Fortune 500 customers see up to a 30 percent reduction in their carbon footprint using technologies such as the HP Carbon Footprint Calculator, Instant-on Technology, duplexing, Universal Print Driver, pull printing technologies and Web Jetadmin. HP IPG is the first business to roll out offerings under the company-wide Eco Solutions program, a collection of eco-conscious products, solutions and services. 

More information about the company’s work in relation to the environment is available at www.hp.com/environment. The full press release of this announcement can be found at www.hp.com/go/ecosolutions.

I would like to hear from you on ways you money to print in a more environmentally friendly way. How do you do it? Please share out your strategies and ideas. I welcome your thoughts.