Picture: Pelikan power – Where there’s a will there’s a way
My baptism in journalism took place in Rhodesia in the late 60s. The country was in the grip of a two-pronged struggle: a guerrilla war waged in the African bush and a battle against the effects of a United Nations trade sanctions campaign aimed at crippling Ian Smith’s illegal regime – though in fact sanctions had the opposite effect as the resourceful rebels found increasingly clever ways to obtain essential materials through a variety of back doors.
The UN’s list of outlawed strategic materials included petrol – though it remained obtainable with farcical ease – and spares for Rhodesia’s ageing Hawker Hunter fighter squadrons. Ingeniously, parts for these jets were obtained from old RAF dumps in the Arabian Gulf states of Oman and Sharjah, much to the chagrin of the Brits, who could not have foreseen that this collection of old iron – preserved by the dry desert atmosphere – would eventually help an enemy on another continent.
That was in the days before the advent of electronic media, when we journalists used acres of carbon paper to make copies of everything we wrote. However, either because of trade sanctions or because of the squeeze on Rhodesia’s foreign exchange, carbon paper was among the many materials in short supply, so we tended to re-use it until it almost fell apart in our typewriters.
Since then Rhodesia has become Zimbabwe and journalists everywhere have traded in their typewriters for computers. I can no longer remember when I last used carbon paper and, until recently, had assumed it was no longer manufactured. But my association with carbon paper was recently revived by the arrival in my office of Chris Livesey, business manager in Ireland and the UK for Pelikan. He assured me the firm still manufactures carbon paper, together with a wide range of stationery products for the commercial, educational and home user markets – along with replacement inkjet cartridges and other 21st century computer consumables.
Livesey was in Ireland to sign a deal with Dublin-based TCW Distribution, for whom the contract with Pelikan represents a distinctive feather in its cap. However, of even more interest to me was Livesey’s revelation that Pelikan, too, is involved in a guerrilla war of sorts. The enemy takes the form of big-name printer manufacturers, who are doing their damndest to thwart the makers of cartridge ink refills in their efforts to provide a less expensive source of consumables to users.
As everyone knows, printer manufacturers make fat profits from seemingly grotesquely priced replacement cartridges, so it is in their commercial interest to wipe out the opposition – or at least to thwart their efforts to undercut prices. One way the big names make life difficult for the refill merchants is by embedding a coded microchip in the printer so that it will recognise only those cartridges with a compatible code.
Pelikan’s solution is simple and ingenious. Instead of designing a replacement cartridge, the firm has invented a small reservoir that corresponds in shape to that of the big-name manufacturers’ cartridges. When a cartridge runs dry, the user simply plugs it into a slot on the Pelikan PowerPad reservoir and takes a break for a cup of coffee. In a few minutes, the dry sponge inside the dead cartridge soaks up the ink from the Pelikan PowerPad, with no spills and no inky fingers. Pelikan’s empty reservoir is then 100% recyclable. Clever, eh? Of course, this system works only with the type of cartridges that use a sponge to retain their ink, so perhaps we can expect printer manufacturers to devise some new system to thwart Pelikan and others of that ilk.
Some people may believe that all’s fair in love, war and business – and that printer manufacturers have a right to protect their vested interests, particularly as marketplace competition has long forced them to shave their profits on printers.
However, there’s another vital element to this equation: the environment. The components and substances of modern ink cartridges, according to Livesey, means they are suitable for recycling only as ink cartridges and nothing else. So those that are not recycled – either because users are unaware of the need or can’t be bothered – end up in landfill. This is bad news at a time when we need to be recycling everything possible.
Our planet is now too fragile for this type of luxury to continue. It’s time for manufacturers of cartridges to take a more responsible attitude to the environment. They need to be encouraging, not hindering, the reuse and refilling of cartridges.
Maybe they should even stop making cartridges – with their high R&D costs – and leave that end of the business to outsiders, even if it means that printer prices have to return to a more realistic level to give the big-name manufacturers a reasonable margin. It’s a price we should all be willing to pay.
There’s more on green IT here:
Subscribers 0
Fans 0
Followers 0
Followers