Al Gore's impact on paper

Last week I posted the news about e-paper from the British Plastic Logic company. This week I read about two other developments that are of interest to the paper and media industry. Toshiba has developed a printer and a new substrate that allow a same sheet to be printed up to 500 times. The printer uses thermal technology, a form of plastic sheet and no ink. Toshiba claims that at the production of the printer and using it produces less carbon dioxide. Xerox in the meantime developed an erasable paper. This sounds like a technology developed by Q in the James Bond films. Once printed the paper self-erases in 16-24 hours. "People like paper" says Eric Shrader of PARC (Xerox research center), that explains why an average office worker prints about 1,200 pages a month and trows away 21% the day that they were printed. They print to read not to store. Xerox is also working on electronic reusable paper. This Gyricon sheet is a thin layer of transparent plastic which is "loaded" electronically to display text and images.