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.

You might think it unusual for a printer company to talk about a paperless office? That would not be self-serving enough, you would say.

After all, hp is in the business of selling printers and having pages printed. At the same time, I believe too much of a good thing is a bad thing as the story goes. So I liked the PC Magazine article on "Three Steps to the Paperless office?". In it were some good tips on how to print less.

In addition, I found this HP link on easy ways to save money printing, which, along with HP's Print Preview software has some great cost saving printing tips.

The challenge of printing less is complex. Although there are many applications and areas where people are printing less, there is such a proliferation of information (enabled by the digital transformation of information on the web) that even if people print fewer pages per content topic, there is just a lot more content areas to print out. Ever try to read a book or article online?

As part of recent new product introduction conversation with Fredric Paul, of Bmighty.com, we spoke on a number of topics including in-house marketing, a comparison of ink vs. laser printers, the future of printing, and environmental issues. You can find the complete text of the article here.

Today's guest post is provided by Tom Codd, who recently returned from Lyra's annual Imaging Symposium.  Tom is the Director of LaserJet Out Bound Marketing.

I had the opportunity this week to attend the annual Lyra Imaging Symposium in Palm Springs.  This event brings together many of the key vendors and technology providers in the printing and imaging business to discuss industry trends and developments.  With representatives from Xerox, Lexmark, Epson, HP, Adobe, and others, together in the same location, it makes for some interesting presentations and even more interesting informal discussions.  

The focus of this year’s conference was “Technologies Disrupting the Business Model”. Bill McGlynn (Memjet), Bruce Dahlgren (HP), and Jim Rise (Xerox) as well as representatives from Lyra all presented on topics relevant to laser printing.  While all of the presenters approached the challenges in office printing differently, the following common themes emerged.

Theme 1:  Color printers and color MFPs are the growth opportunity of the future for the laser printer business. 
New, affordable color products like the HP Color LaserJet 1600, 2605, and 3505 as well as new low end  color products from other vendors have been delivered to market with technologies that make color printing much more affordable.  HP believes that providing affordable, reliable laser based products with superior print quality and deliver on the heritage of the original LaserJet is what customers want.  Xerox, with their solid ink technology, believes that delivering products with a relatively high acquisition price ($2500 for the 8860 vs $1000 for the predecessor) and low color cost per page is the right approach (see Xerox blog post).  Xerox also touted the greenness of solid ink’s “cartridge free” approach, but did not mention that solid ink consumes more than 3X the power due to the fact that they recommend you do not turn it off and there is no real sleep mode.   Interesting to note is that Xerox also has several laser based color products that use the same cartridge based approach as HP.

Memjet, a printing technology provider, also gave a quick update on their progress of bringing a new low cost ink based technology to market. While Memjet claims that they can deliver a print technology for very high speed personal color printers at breakthrough prices, they have yet to announce any printer vendor partners for this technology. 

Theme 2:  It’s not about speeds and feeds anymore. 
Bruce Dahlgren (HP) gave a very compelling presentation on Print 2.0 and the enterprise and how printers and the documents they print have evolved over the years.  He described how printing devices that nobody thought were strategic are now becoming an integral component of enterprise information delivery systems.  See Jim Lyons' post on this topic. 

Theme 3: Environmental. 
Charley LeCompte (Lyra) and Michael Hoffmann (HP) both gave very interesting presentations on the environmental impact of printing.  Michael covered HP’s approach to reducing the environmental impact of printing on the environment and used the event to publicly announce HP’s "closed loop" process of using 100% recycled plastics in the manufacture of HP inkjet cartridges.  The process, which went into pilot in 2005, has already resulted in the manufacturing of 200 million HP printer cartridges from recycled materials.  The program also lets customers world wide return inkjet cartridges for free using a postage-paid return envelope provided by HP with the inkjet print cartridge box.  LaseJet printer cartridges have a similar return program and to date 106 million cartridges have been returned and recycled as part of our Planet Partners program. See Vince’s previous Green post.

Charley LeCompte wrapped up the conference with an eye opening presentation on the environmental impact of printing. It is fairly intuitive that with a printer,  paper usage, which equates to trees consumed, is the biggest impact on the environment.  What I didn’t realize is just how environmentally unfriendly the paper manufacturing process is.  I learned that 13.5 million tons of paper was used by printers, MFPs and copiers in 2007 and that it takes roughly 5.3 90-foot 12-inch diameter Doug Fir pine trees to make a ton of new office paper.  That’s a lot of trees! This is why duplexing is such an important thing for each and every printer user.  Our studies show that duplexing saves on average 25% on paper usage.  Why only 25%?  Well, many documents are only 1 page long.  Even so 25% savings would save a lot of trees and help minimize the impact of printing on the environment. Jim Lyons had additional coverage of Charley’s presentation.

It has been a very interesting couple of days and it is encouraging to see that many of the issues in the industry are areas where we at HP are putting focus and investment to make the printing experience the best it can be for our customers.

2007 Blog Action Day is upon us (don’t worry if this didn’t make your calendar)! I’m writing a post to support this effort because I feel very strongly about two aspects of Blog Action Day. One is that hp and I care deeply about the environment and making our LaserJet devices as environmentally friendly as possible. I also appreciate the way that Blog Action Day is going about this effort. In true Web 2.0 fashion, they aren’t pushing a particular environmental agenda, rather they’re simply encouraging people to blog on environmental issues in their own way. So that is what I want to do today.

In the past, I’ve posted blogs on a number of environmental issues as they relate to HP LaserJets. I’ve also opened my blog up to guest bloggers on green-related subjects in order to go into greater detail on particular topics, as in:

• Turn your HP LaserJets Green--a comparative piece on how you can make using LaserJets work with the environment
• Earth Day Celebrations and HP LaserJets--synopsis of hp Earth Day activities and those particularly related to LaserJets
• HP Responds to Australian Printer Study--where I pointed you to hp's initial reaction to an office environmental study
• HP LaserJets help keep you Business in the Green--a guest blog by Dave Lobato on particular LaserJet environmental aspects
• Xerox Solid Ink: Reality vs. The Hype--clarification of the relative benefits of these two technologies, with an emphasis on the energy savings from using laser printing in your office environment
• The HP Page Cost Calculator: MFPs vs. Copiers--a guest blog by Tara Tackett on how using the Page Cost Calculator can help you make printing decisions that conserve your resources

I hope you agree that these efforts reflect some of the key aspects of following an environmentally conscious LaserJet effort. There is collectively more for hp to do in this area, but I believe hp LaserJet printers have some of the best environmental capabilities in the industry. We want to “walk the talk” on environmental issues--I’m particularly interested in how we can help our customers go greener in their office environments (look for more in this vein going forward). 

At the same time, I'm going to expose you to vendors that say they're environmentally-oriented, but have more fluff than substance in their environmental programs and the products they sell. Doing one thing really well and saying you have the best environmental program is not what this is about. There need to be many, collective company initiatives working together to drive meaningful change in the industry. I feel that hp is on the right path, but there's more to do.

At last count, there were over 15,000 blogs registered to participate in the Blog Action Day 2007 net event. This is much like a get out the vote drive, where the important aspect is not persuading people of the efficacy of your opinion, rather, the key is to simply be involved. This is much like my approach to blogging, where I don’t try to push HP LaserJets on you, but rather, I like to talk about industry issues and let my guest bloggers and comment posters freely promote their points of view. If there are particular environmental topics around LaserJets that you’d like to discuss, please let me know and I’ll field your comment either directly or through a posting (if there are enough similar comments).

I’ve blogged on printing cost issues in “HP LaserJet Printers and Cost of Ownership”. Since then, there have been very interesting developments in this space. Some manufacturers now offer ways to figure out your relative printing costs—so you can decide what kind of devices you want to print documents on. The leading tools in such page cost calculations are described in this newsletter by Industry Analysts, Inc. An expert on this subject, and key member of my Team, Tara Tackett delivers the following blog post on hp’s free tool in this space, the Page Cost Calculator:

"There was a point in time in the not too distant past, when printers were printers, copiers were copiers, and rarely did the two compete with one another.

With the introduction of printer-based MFPs, like the HP LaserJet M4345 MFP, the game has changed. Today, MFPs boasting high speeds and features such as copy, scan, fax and comprehensive paper-handling are competing in the traditional copier space. And, digital copiers with networking capabilities, previously seen only in printers, are competing for printer pages as well.

Which is better? Printer-based or copier-based? Copier vendors would like you to believe that printer-based MFPs are a poor choice due to their higher supplies costs per page. Printer vendors counter with the higher hardware and maintenance costs of copier-based devices.

HP understands there’s a place for both. In order to choose the device that is best for your business, it is critical to know your page volumes, or the number of pages you print each month.

Printer-based MFPs, with their lower purchase price, cost less overall at lower page volumes. Copier-based devices, with their lower supplies CPP, may cost less at higher page volumes.

How high is high, you ask. Which device would be right for your business? Let us help you find out. HP has just introduced a Page Cost Calculator for HP MFPs featuring the LaserJet M4345 MFP and its top three digital copier competitors. With just a few easy steps, it will help you determine which device offers you the best value--the HP MFP or the digital copier. Feel free to give it a try. You may be surprised at what you find.

This interactive tool, which has now launched on hp.com, is already receiving high praise from analysts. Andy Slawetsky from Industry Analysts says “We thought HP’s Page Cost Calculator was impressive for two reasons. First, it dispels the myth that A3 devices are, for the most part, cheaper to operate than A4 devices. Second, the sponsoring vendor (in this case, HP) does not always win.”

Mr. Slawetsky is correct. HP doesn’t always win. The tool was created to give customers upfront and honest information they need to make the best purchase decision. If a customer is printing unusually high volumes, say 25K pages or more per month, the HP M4345 MFP may not be the best device for them. At those volumes, a customer may be better off economically to use a device with a lower supplies cost per page. Good choices for environments with high print volumes are the HP CM8050/8060 MFPs with Edgeline Technology.

It is worth noting, however, that according to a study completed by International Data Corporation (IDC), a full 87% of workgroup class copiers and MFPs (25-45ppm) print less than 20,000 pages for month. At these volumes, you’ll be much better served by HP."

I hope you have time to try the Page Cost Calculator, it’s pretty enlightening in that it gives objective Total Cost Per Page based on the volume of pages you print. Please feel free to leave any comments about this blog and I’ll make sure Tara gets them. -Vince

Xerox’s announcement on September 24^th, 2007, may have some customers taking a look at Solid Ink technology for their color business printing requirements. We hope customers take a close look at the technology, and the history of Solid Ink vs. Color Laser or business-focused inkjet devices and make an informed decision about which technologies are the best.

It’s important to consider that Xerox acquired Solid Ink technology when they purchased Tektronix in January of 2000. In the 1980’s, Solid Ink printers had captured an early niche in the graphics departments as proofing devices. Graphic artists liked the 11”X17” format and glossy, vibrant colors that solid ink offered. And, at the time, the nascent inkjet technology business was just emerging. Inkjet was delivering only 180 dpi on special paper. Color laser printers were not commercially feasible back then. We dreamed of someday selling a Color LaserJet printer for $1,000. Today, of course, the technology is much less expensive—HP Color LaserJet printers start at just $299.

But as the technology matured and color printing spread into other parts of the office, color laser became the dominant technology of choice. There were significant differences in the needs of the office users vs. the graphics department. (hp also has strong offerings for the Graphic Arts). Office users needed permanent output that could be handled, copied, annotated and archived. Permanence was especially important in contracts, legal documents, purchase agreements, proposals, etc. Solid Ink technology could not match color laser/dry toner technology in these areas. Also, color laser technology was able to deliver sharper text quality which was also critical in high-value business documents.

General office users also needed fast output. Again, Solid Ink technology had some drawbacks compared to color laser, many of which are documented in this side by side comparison. If a Solid Ink device is turned off, or if nozzles clog, there is up to a 12.5 minute delay to cycle the printer. A color laser printer can be power cycled in less than two minutes. This was another key advantage for color laser.

In addition, color laser technology provided simplicity at print time for users. With HP Color LaserJets users get best print quality in default mode. There’s no need to go into the print driver and fiddle with settings. But with Solid Ink technology, there was a dramatic relationship between quality and performance. If you wanted fastest performance you'd get a draft quality and printing would slow down to a fraction of the maximum print speed for highest quality. This extra complexity was an additional disadvantage for Solid Ink in the office. Users and helpdesks preferred the simplicity of the color laser user model–file print and great output without performance penalties, and no need to change settings in the print driver.

And the Solid Ink devices did not earn an Energy Star approval. They used 4 to 5 times the amount of power as color laser printers. Xerox created some special bundles that were Energy Star compliant, but the top-selling Solid Ink models were not and are still not Energy Star products. This was another reason to go with Color Laser technology.

Solid Ink technology maintained a niche with early adopters and graphics departments, but never experienced the mainstream adoption in the general office because it had fundamental shortcomings that make it inferior to color laser technology. As office color printing boomed, color laser technology boomed and became the de-facto technology standard and hp was, and still is, the leading vendor. Today, additional investments are being made in inkjet printing, like hp’s Officejet Pro and Edgeline Technology, that allow business quality results from inkjet printers tuned to SMB and Enterprise applications and customer needs. The result--as of 2007, Solid Ink technology is used in less than 5% of color laser class printer applications.

Will Xerox’s recent announcement change things? There’s a new pricing strategy-–more expensive printers and cheaper supplies. But has the technology changed? I don’t think so. Solid Ink still has inferior permanence to color laser/dry toner. Color Laser still warms up in 2 minutes (from Power Off, while printing much faster from Powersave Mode, using Instant-on Technology) vs. 12.5 minutes for Solid Ink. Solid ink still requires significant delays for best print quality and solid ink printers still use 4 to 5 times the power.

I wouldn’t be distracted by new cost per page claims from Xerox. This is a defensive competitive play—one that Xerox seems more comfortable initiating than something that is truly new and innovative. A while back, I wrote about how Xerox responded to hp’s hugely successful printer-based MFP. From a technology standpoint, nothing has changed.

Raising the price of the printers and dropping cost-per-page is an alternative business model not unlike what Kodak is trying to do with consumer inkjet printing. What is really important is Total Cost per Page (TCPP)—where you look at hardware prices, cost per page, up time, support costs, down time, etc., to derive the real cost of printing. Stick with the right technology for office color printing, color laser.

You might have heard how “Green” actions affect IT as in “HP CEO Hurd Says Green “Enhances” IT Price and Performance” in InformationWeek’s CIO blog. This week, I’m turning the blog entry over to a key member of my LaserJet Marketing Team to discuss “Green” issues and how they relate to hp’s LaserJet business. While we’ve discussed related subjects in “Turn your LaserJets Green” and “Earth Day Celebrations and HP LaserJets”—Dave Lobato now presents 10 LaserJet-specific ideas for making your business Greener (the following is from Dave Lobato, HP LaserJet Marketing):

“Want to cut the carbon footprint of you printing equipment, supplies more than half? One of our large enterprise customers did, maybe you can too. While this Customer would rather remain unrecognized for this effort (I will say that they are a large company with approximately 100,000 employees)—such relative savings are available to your organization as well.

Operating a green business is not only good for the environment but good for your business' bottom line because conserving resources and cutting down on waste saves money. Currently over 80% of enterprise customers evaluate environmental performance as part of the purchasing decision (from internal HP report on Global Environmental Market Trends). The good news is that whether you run a home-based business or a multi-site enterprise, there are a number of simple things you can do to run an environmentally-friendly business.

Here are our top ten easy-to-implement ideas for running a green business that you can put into practice right now to make your office a more environmentally-friendly place:

1. Conserve Energy--turn off equipment when it's not being used. Turning off equipment during "off" business hours can save up to 66% of their normal power consumption. Also, these HP LaserJet tools can help you conserve:

• HP’s Web Jetadmin helps you manage your fleet by presetting sleep and wake modes so your equipment doesn't consume power during evenings, over weekends and holidays.
• Use HP’s printing devices with Instant-on Technology. Not only will you get your first page out in just a few seconds, but this technology can use up to 50% less energy.

2. Produce double-sided documents whenever possible. Internal studies show companies can achieve at least a 25% savings by setting duplex as a standard:

• Utilize HP’s Universal Print Driver in your environment to set duplex as the printing default. Users can opt out of duplex mode when printing items that require single-sided printing.

3. Reduce fax-related paper waste by using digital images that can be captured and sent directly from a scanner or computer without requiring a printed hard copy:

• Utilize HP scanners, digital MFPs and digital sending software to capture and send images through the workflow process, reducing the need for paper and supplies.

4. Recycle--Choose suppliers who take back packaging, supplies and hardware for reuse:

• HP’s industry-leading Planet Partners program, established in 1991, allows free and convenient return and recycling of toner and ink cartridges. More than 106 million HP LaserJet print cartridges have been returned and recycled since 1991. If you laid these cartridges end to end, starting at the equator, you would circle 85% of the circumference of the earth.
• Also, for a small fee, hp will take back and properly dispose of any vendor's hardware, in most countries. To date, this program has taken back over 1 billion pounds of equipment.

5. Detoxify--Many offices have toxic substances, such as used batteries and copier toner, on hand. Talk to suppliers about alternatives to toxics and make sure you properly dispose of the ones you can't avoid using:

• Utilize HP’s desktop MFP’s with Instant-on Copy which uses LED copy technology instead of a fluorescent tube. This technology saves energy and reduces the hazardous particles found in fluorescent tubes.
• All HP LaserJet printing products are now RoHS compliant, meaning all lead-based materials have been removed as of July 2006.
• Using HP’s chemically-grown toner is more environmentally-friendly than competitive alternatives.
• Recycle hardware and supplies through HP Planet Partners program (see above).
• Use media with recycled content--HP Recycled Paper, for instance, reduces build-up of dust particles and is designed to run on all office equipment.

6. Utilize energy efficient products in your environment. Choosing the right product
for the environment can help reduce your overall Total Cost of Ownership (TCO):

• HP works very closely with ENERGY STAR® to ensure our products are optimized to meet and exceed energy consumption levels.

7. Buy green--Tell suppliers that you're interested in sustainable products and set specific goals for buying recycled, refurbished or used. Make the environment, and not just price, a factor when purchasing:

• HP has been the tech industry’s environmental leader for decades. Our Design for Environment strategy informs our operations, R&D investments, customer solutions, and relationships with our supply chain partners. This results in a comprehensive set of business decisions that are good for our customers, good for business and good for the planet. With our broad portfolio and extensive partner relationships–HP can more effectively reduce our carbon footprint, limit waste and recycle more responsibly than our competitors.

8. Use a Balanced Deployment Model--Using a model where selective desktop, centralized workgroup and data center printing exists will reduce your overall power consumption and supplies costs.

9. Get employees involved--Create a team to lead the company's eco-efforts and determine where you can have the biggest impact for the least amount of money
going green is something each and every person in the organization is responsible for. Set specific programs, owners, and metrics and periodically review your progress.

10. Communicate--Inform suppliers and customers about your efforts. And get in touch with local regulatory agencies, many of which offer financial incentives to businesses that make progress on local, state or municipal green initiatives.

Going green doesn't necessarily require a radical makeover. A series of small steps--many of which don't cost a dime--can add up to a new way of doing business.”

Please feel free to leave any comments about this blog or related Imaging & Printing subjects and I’ll make sure Dave gets them. I would also be interested in hearing about your ideas of how to make printing more green or specific actions you have taken in your businesses . . .

-Vince

I know many of you have heard of a study that was published earlier this week by the Queensland University of Technology. The report findings suggested that ultrafine particle (UFP) emissions from laser printing systems (hp included) are associated with special health risks–and that these risks are comparable to the health risk of inhaling second hand smoke from cigarettes. We take the safety of our products very seriously and I believe we build products that are safe and meet all relevant environmental standards and emissions limits. This issue is being actively looked into at the highest levels within hp’s imaging and printing business.

Below is HP’s statement on this topic:

“After a preliminary review of the Queensland University of Technology research on particle emission characteristics of office printers, HP does not agree with its conclusion or some of the bold claims the authors have made recently in press reports.

HP stands behind the safety of its products. Testing of ultrafine particles is a very new scientific discipline. There are no indications that ultrafine particle (UFP) emissions from laser printing systems are associated with special health risks. Currently, the nature and chemical composition of such particles–whether from a laser printer or from a toaster–cannot be accurately characterized by analytical technology.

However, many experts believe that many of the UFPs found in common household and office products are not discrete solid particles, but may be condensation products or small droplets created during thermal processes. HP agrees more testing in this area is needed, which is why we’ve been active with two of the world’s leading independent authorities on this subject: Air Quality Sciences in the United States and the Wilhelm-Klauditz Institute in Germany.

Vigorous tests are an integral part of HP’s research and development and its strict quality-control procedures. HP LaserJet printing systems, original HP print cartridges and papers are tested for dust release and possible material emissions and are compliant with all applicable international health and safety requirements. In addition to meeting or exceeding these guidelines, HP’s design criteria for its laser printing systems incorporate guidelines from both the Blue Angel Program in Germany and the Greenguard Program in the United States.

Based on our own testing, HP knows that many variables can affect the outcome of tests for ultrafine particle emissions. Although HP is not aware of all of the specific methodologies used in the Queensland study, based on what we’ve seen in the report–as well as our own work in this area–we do not believe there is a link between printer emissions and any public health risk. Specifically, HP does not see an association between printer use by customers and negative health effects for volatile organic compounds, ozone or dust. While we recognize ultrafine, fine, and coarse particles are emitted from printing systems, these levels are consistently below recognized occupational exposure limits.

HP hopes to learn more from the study authors about how products were chosen for the study, how ranges were determined given no standards exist, and many other factors that could have influenced the results.Customer choice is important to us at HP and we know our customers do their homework–whether it’s about print quality, price or safety–before making purchasing decisions. As we continue to look at the facts around printer emissions, we found this perspective from Berkeley Lab interesting and maybe you will, too.”

In the past, I blogged on how you might tune into the “Green” aspects of LaserJet printing in your work environment in “Turn your Laser Printers Green.” We’ve also discussed how HP Instant-on Technology allows you to keep your printers in “powersave mode” in order to conserve energy. Now I’ll switch gears to talk about how HP is doing the same around the Earth Day Celebration, and in everyday earth-friendly processes. Many of these earth-friendly awareness activities are internal and aren’t highly publicized. For instance:

• Many HP employees have participated in the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF’s) “Time for Change” Campaign--taking place in the 50 days leading up to Earth Day, April 22nd.
• HP has launched an internal, nationwide coin collection and coin count challenge to support the organization’s global conservation efforts—also donated to the WWF.
• Free computer hardware recycling for employees.
• Many HP sites are organizing volunteer opportunities like planting trees and other restoration efforts.
• There’s an internal Contest for employees to offer up their best suggestions for how HP can reduce its environmental impact.
• We’re offering the new HP DeskJet F4140 Energy Star All-in-One Printer through 1,600 Wal-Mart stores—including free recycling!

One of the more tangible areas that my LaserJet Team has been focusing on is the area of ease of setup, which by the way, equals a more green approach to things like packaging for HP LaserJets, as you can witness in this video showing how LaserJets use much less packaging than the competition.

On a corporate scale, HP has committed to reducing global energy use by 20% by 2010. This includes redesigning packaging for printer cartridges in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 37 million pounds in 2007. This is in addition to ongoing HP efforts to reduce greenhouse gases. You might ask: Why is HP so committed to the environment? Jim Frey, HP’s Corporate Environmental Strategies Manager states:

“As a major global company, we have an opportunity to make a positive impact on something that’s not only socially important, but also responds to the needs of our customers, our investors, and our employees. We want to encourage our employees to serve as HP "ambassadors" for the environment wherever they live and work. They can help remind others that each of us has the power to make a big difference when it comes to the environment, particularly by reducing our own energy use and recycling used hardware and printing supplies."

In fact, HP products—like HP Virtual Rooms and the Halo Collaboration Studio—make it so you don’t have to travel in order to collaborate with colleagues, partners and customers face to face. HP employees, and a number of cutting edge companies, like DreamWorks Animation use this conferencing system to reduce employees' need to travel—making energy conservation even easier to accomplish. In addition, HP employees now have a carbon calculator that measures the environmental impact of travel.”

During the Earth Day celebration period, Chris Brown, an HP software architect and volunteer with the non-profit Climate Change Project, is traveling to several HP sites in the U.S. to discuss climate change and HP’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. HP is also hosting a WWF climate scientist, Lara Hansen to educate employees on the joint HP-WWF initiative on climate change. These will be webcast, so that HP employees around the world won’t miss out.

While I believe this is meaningful work, this work is never really done. Vendors like HP need to continue to innovate in this area, making steady and incremental contributions to improve the environmental friendliness of our products. Feel free to comment below on how your company is putting your best “Green Footprint” forward . . .

As things are turning green again outdoors, I’d like to discuss how you can make things a bit “Greener” inside. I’m not talking about transplanting your plants and cuttings indoors, but rather how you can leave a Greener footprint around the office by using energy-efficient imaging and printing (I&P) devices in ways that save the most resources. I briefly touched on this subject in last week’s blog, “HP LaserJet Print Speeds and Instant-on Technology”, and would like to further explore how this fuser technology reduces energy usage and other Green printing aspects of growing importance.

We’re all aware that energy costs are rising, worldwide. Unless you’re the Facilities Manager for a very large organization, you might not have considered the electricity used in operating your I&P devices. For example, if you compare the energy costs for the HP LaserJet P2015 Printer with similar products from Dell, Samsung, Brother and Lexmark, you’ll find that these competitive devices average $17.32 in energy costs per year (assuming 10 cents per kilowatt-hour (kW)) to operate. Under similar operating conditions, the HP LaserJet P2015 Printer only uses $7.88 in electricity per year, a relative savings of $9.44 per device.

Viewed holistically, this adds up to significant energy savings. With the worldwide volume of monochrome laser printers at about 5.3 million units, this sums to an annual savings of just over $50 million if people used the more energy efficient I&P devices. This amounts to saving about 500 million kW hours—or enough energy to power approximately 50,000 US households for a year!

Another Green capability that sometimes goes overlooked in using LaserJets is the ability to save on toner by using the Economode setting. Choosing Economode for things like draft documents and printing out emails essentially let’s you use less toner than normal printing mode. As mentioned in Jim Lyons Observations, “Printing Less While Printing More”, this is functionality that has been available in LaserJets since 1993--imagine the potential toner savings over the last 14 years.

HP’s cartridge recycling program is another great example of how LaserJet users can be more “Green” conscious.HP has recycled over 92 million LaserJet print cartridges during this period through the Free & Easy: return & recycle program. My understanding is that our current recycling Program is larger than the combined efforts of all other I&P vendors. While free, the “easy” promise is delivered using bulk and postage-paid labels and envelopes for LaserJet cartridges in North America and Europe (drop-off bins and bulk boxes for Asia-Pacific and the Latin America regions). The plastics and metals from recycled HP print cartridges have been used to make a range of new products, including auto body parts, clothes hangers, roof tiles, serving trays and shoe soles.

To save on paper use, you also might consider using the duplex setting on your LaserJet, either manually or by selecting duplexing within the Universal Print Driver. To do this manually within the HP LaserJet printer driver settings, click on this link. A better alternative for those managing a fleet of I&P devices is to download the HP Universal Print Driver and selecting the automatic duplexing option. Think of the paper and trees that could be saved if everyone used more duplexing!

As you can see, over the years we’ve done a lot to help you save energy, toner and paper when using LaserJets. Hopefully, this will also help you save your own personal time and energy when evaluating I&P devices (and turn your competitors “green” with envy). Feel free to comment below on any additional ways you’ve learned to leave a Greener footprint in your imaging and printing process . . .