RITI Printer Uses Your Coffee Grounds For Eco Ink 184
Jason S. writes to tell us that for those seeking to "go green" or those just wishing to try something different, RTI now offers a printer that uses coffee instead of ink. In addition to recycling your grounds, the printer also uses good old fashioned elbow grease to move the grounds cartridge back and forth, saving power. Sounds like a novelty that will die quickly as human sloth reasserts itself. "Hosted by Core77 and Inhabitat, this year's Greener Gadgets Design Competition resulted in an incredible crop of innovative consumer electronics designs, and we're excited to offer you the first scoop on some of our favorite designs! Jeon Hwan Ju's RITI printer works by replacing environmentally un-friendly inkjet cartridges with the dregs from your daily coffee. Simply place used grounds in the ink case, insert a piece of paper, and move the ink case left and right to print text."
Supply (Score:4, Interesting)
With the amount of coffee I drink, the entire building would have an supply of used coffee ground ink.
Re:This is the best kind of green technology (Score:3, Interesting)
As someone who once wrote printer firmware, I agree. Even ignoring color, absorption, and all the ink issues- how the hell are you going to make sure the ink cartridges are moved at a steady rate so that ink can be shot at the right time?
Re:This is the best kind of green technology (Score:2, Interesting)
I would actually like to be able to make a calligraphy ink from coffee grounds, never mind the printer application.
Re:This is the best kind of green technology (Score:1, Interesting)
I especially love how slashdot has gone from being a site where the primary expression to something like this was "cool, what a neat idea, i wonder how it could be made to work" has now turned into this "bah humbug, this sucks because i cannot buy it at the Apple store yesterday"
Re:Compost (Score:4, Interesting)
Printed on biodegradable paper
Hemp is illegal in this country. Wood pulp is toxic to most plants (and us too, which is why wood alcohol will make you blind while grain alcohol makes great mixed drinks), that's why it's hard to get grass to grow under a tree. And even if you used hemp (or grass or something else) paper, it would have to be acid-free paper to not kill your plants. Ironically a good source of acid-free paper is coffee filters, except that the coffee makes them acidic.
Of course, you really want acid-free paper anyway. paper is for books, and you want your books to last as long as possible. Normal acidic paper (what you're running through your printer) lasts 50-100 years without extreme measures to keep it legible. I'm going to have to replace my paperback copies of the Foundation trilogy because after over four decades they're barely legible now.