Recycle Your Waste Paper Into New Ones In The Office Itself With Epson PaperLab

Everyone knows the three R’s – Reduce, Reuse and Recycle but almost none of us bother with that because it requires a little effort. Epson, one of the world's largest manufacturers of computer printers and imaging equipment has developed a new product that is supposed to simplify the process of recycling paper because the entire process of disposing and creating new paper sheets takes place in the office itself. Meet the Epson PaperLab, the world's first compact office papermaking system capable of producing new paper from shredded waste paper. The process of churning out fresh paper sheets does not take hours but only three minutes from pressing the start button and it can make paper of any size and thickness such as A3 and A4 office paper, business cards, colour paper and even scented ones.


Unlike industrial paper recycling units which consume thousands of gallons of water, the PaperLab consumes a cup of water for every A4 size of sheet it produces. Epson claims that an office does not need additional plumbing to use the PaperLab so we are thinking it might be using a small tank of water for the process. While Epson have remained tight-lipped about the intricacies of the PaperLab, their #-Link-Snipped-# gives us a vague idea and thanks to an eagle-eyed commentator on #-Link-Snipped-# we get a closer look at it thanks to a #-Link-Snipped-# that was submitted by Epson in 2013.


Once you put in the waste paper into the PaperLab the process of fiberisation takes place. This is the process that they talk about in the patent where the paper gets converted into long, thin cottony, fibres. This means a company gets a secure way of disposing confidential documents in the office. Depending on the user’s choice different binders are added by the PaperLab to these fibres. Different binding agents give the paper the required whiteness, colour, fragrance and flame resistance. Finally with pressure forming, new sheets of paper emerge from the machine.

Epson claims PaperLab can produce 14 A4 sized sheets per minute, which means in an 8-hour office day it can churn out 6720 sheets. The only bad news about the PaperLab is that it is still a developmental prototype that will go into production next year. The biggest query is about the price of the PaperLab which is still undisclosed. The prototype shall be showcased at Eco-Products 2015, an environmental exhibition in Tokyo this month. Let’s see how that turns out and hope that it is reasonably priced so that companies will be motivated to invest in one for their office premises.