Managed.IT - issue 60

23 www.managedITmag.co.uk SUSTAINABILITY Expanded range To date, Epson has won over business and public sector buyers with a small number of devices. However, Wells says it is now starting to expand its range, mainly to satisfy the conventions of the market and the demand of its resellers. “Historically, we’ve worked with a relatively small range of machines and not seen the need for mid- range speeds of 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55 pages per minute. Instead, we have had 25ppm devices and 60, 75 and 100ppm devices, and nothing in the middle. A lot of people consider 25ppm, both for A4 and A3, to be too slow because for the last 15 years the average speed of an A3 copier in the UK has been 35-45ppm. “So, what we did initially was to focus on the number of pages people print. In the UK, the average print job in any business is less than 4 pages. In Epson, it is 3.2 pages, with two thirds of print jobs being just one page. It doesn’t matter if your machine is 30, 40, 50 or even 200 pages per minute; what’s important is how long it takes for the first page to be printed. Every single one of our office machines, including our 100ppm device, prints its first page out in under 6 seconds. On our 25ppm machine, you would have to have a print job of 18 pages or more to notice any speed disadvantage against a laser printer.” In a change of tack, Epson is planning, over the next 12 to 18 months, to add additional machines to its mid-range offering by scaling down the fixed Linejet heads in its Enterprise range of 60, 75 and 100ppm machines. “I think we are winning the argument that for the purposes of efficiency and productivity you don’t necessarily need a higher speed, but it is sometimes easier not to have that conversation. If you are hung up on the idea that you need a 40ppm machine because you had a 40ppm one before, then we will be able to deliver that,” said Wells. Long-life consumables Another aspect of Epson printers that has an impact on their carbon footprint is the ink itself and especially how it is delivered – in large ink packs with page yields of up to 86,000 pages that, as well as producing up to 96% fewer used consumables than laser printers, require fewer deliveries of replacement supplies over the course of a printer’s lifecycle. For small office and home office users, Epson has introduced what it calls the Just Add Paper option, which bundles new printers with enough ink to last three years, so that over that period there is no need for additional deliveries and packaging. Continued improvement Tackling the broader impact of printing in such ways is important for Epson as it continues to reduce the environmental impact of its devices. “We are constantly looking at how we can drive things down further – how we can slice very small elements off what are already very small elements. To put this in perspective, at trade shows we would connect a bicycle to a printer that people could power and get a print from just by pedalling. It is pretty difficult to shave much off power consumption when you are that far ahead of the curve, so we will look at other aspects to see how we can improve on those,” said Wells. One of these is the recycling of paper through its PaperLab recycling system, which takes in used printer paper at one end and outputs clean A4 sheets for re-use at the other. It is currently working on scaling down the technology, potentially into devices not much larger than a copier, and within the next two or three years hopes to bring out a version that turns waste paper into packaging material. Sustainable presentations Meanwhile, Epson is applying the same inventiveness to other areas of its business portfolio, including Moverio virtual reality glasses, which enable engineers to support devices remotely without the need to travel to distant sites, and projection. “Similar to our crusade to get heat-free printers into the office space, I am absolutely focused on trying to deliver interactivity to classrooms through the medium of projection rather than flat panels. You can create a much larger image with a projector than you can through a panel and would have to spend many times the cost of a projector on a flat panel or a video wall to deliver an image of the same size. We think that’s important because with the return to school and socially distant classes some pupils are going to be further from the front of the class than they have ever been. “If you are looking at a 65in screen – the typical panel size sold into schools – it is unlikely that pupils at the sides and the back of the class will be able to see everything. Projecting at up to 120 inches – the typical projection size of our school projectors – is more inclusive. And, if you are using areas such as the assembly hall for teaching so that you can keep more people in the class, our high brightness projectors go up to 500 inches in size. “You can get that interactive experience through projection without having a very heavy, very expensive and, at end of life, harder to dispose of product containing a lot of glass, metal and plastic,” explained Wells. Epson’s projectors and printers are proof that you can square the circle - that you can deliver both efficiency improvements and environmental benefits. www.epson.co.uk I am absolutely focused on trying to deliver interactivity to classrooms through the medium of projection rather than flat panels