Eco Printing

The RTI Printer

For those of you who enjoy a cup of joe with your morning paper, the RITI Coffee printer offers an ingenious way to green your morning ritual: by turning your old coffee grounds into a sustainable source of ink for your printer! One of fifty top entries in this year’s Greener Gadgets Competition, the RITI printer takes the leftover grounds from your morning roast and plugs them into an ink cartridge to create an eco-friendly source of ink. Who would have ever guessed coffee stains could be be so useful!

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.

In addition to ridding the printing process of the ink cartridge (its most environmentally un-friendly throw-out), the RITI printer also requires a bit of human action to get things going, which eliminates the need for any really significant power source. This last part of the idea seems a bit impractical, but after all that coffee you are drinking, maybe you need some exercise to burn off your excess energy!? Not a coffee drinker? No worries, it works just as well with tea.

How to Make Your Own Ink

Basic Permanent Black Ink:

1 egg yolk
1 tsp gum arabic
1/2 cup honey
1/2 tsp lamp black (buy in a tube or make by holding a plate over a lit candle)

Mix egg yolk, gum arabic and honey in a small bowl. Add lamp black to make a thick paste. Store in a jar. To use, mix a little paste w/ a little water to make a fluid.


Brown Ink:

1/2 cup boiling water
4-5 teabags (or 4 tsp of loose tea)
1 tsp gum arabic

Pour boiling water over the tea bags in a large bowl, add gum arabic. Steep for 15 minutes. Squeeze teabags to extract as much tannic acid as possible. Strain and allow to cool before bottling. Use with a paintbrush or quill pen, etc.

Soy Based Ink

Soy based inks
Soy based inks have garnered a lot of attention lately, and with due reason.
The printing industry has long been motored on petroleum-based inks, and with the move towards soy and vegetable based alternatives at an all time high, I decided a list of benefits was in order.
What are the Benefits of Soy Based Ink for Printing ? We have listed out top 6...

It's Soy !
I am usually not a fan of accentuating the obvious, but basing an ink on soy is so much better for the environment than basing it on petroleum, that I could't resist.

Colour
Soy based inks are brighter than standard offset inks. More vibrancy, more pop, who would complain ?

Recycling
When papers are recycled they have togo through a process called "de-inking." Soy inks respond better to the de-inking process than traditional inks, resulting in less paper fibre damage. The end result of this is a brighter, whiter recycled paper, making the entire process quicker, and greener.

Longevity
Contrary to their ease in de-inking, soy based inks do not rub off of papers as easily as traditional inks (especially on newsprint.)

Low in Volatile Organic Compounds
Soy based inks are naturally low in VOCs, and thus give off less harmful, nasty chemicals. Using soy inks reduces pollution, and

Renewable Resource
Soy is a renewable resource - petroleum is not.