Green Collar Blog

Infographic provided by Staveley Head

 

 

I recently had the opportunity to work with Dell to give away one of their new 'Green' printers to Green Collar's social media following. It was a great experience and a lot of fun, especially considering this was no simple inkjet home printer, but instead an enterprise-level, four-color, network laser printer meant to be a workhorse for small and medium sized businesses.

This was evidenced by the fact that the Dell 5130cdn Color Laser printer arrived on a palette! I had to grab one of my most fit colleagues to help me carry it to its central location...it is a beast! Setting it up, however, was a snap. The four cylindrical, CYMK toner cartridges clicked easily into place and with parallel, ethernet, USB and wireless networking options, connecting it to the network was simple. The drivers installed smoothly, although there was some confusion as after installation the printer appeared in the print menu of users as two printers: First as a 5130cdn PS (post-script language) and also as a 5130cdn PCL6 (HP print language). We’ve found the PS to be less quirky and more stable, so that has become the standard. So you’re probably thinking, “this sounds just like any other laser printer....so what makes it green?” Good questions. This is what we’ve found.

Crazy Fast Warmups

If you’ve ever had to wait for a laser printer to warm up, or even worse, a color laser printer, you know that it can be painful. Warm up times of several minutes are not uncommon while the machine hammers away working to get the cold toner ready to go. This printer generally takes about 8 or 9 seconds from the arrival of the job in the queue to the printing of the first page. That is fast. This rapid warmup time apparently has something to do with the type of toner they use (EA eco-toner), which also allows the printer to go quiet (power down completely) much more quickly than laser printers we have been used to in the past, which once warmed up would want to stay that way for hours and hours. This one usually shuts down in about 10 minutes and is completely silent until called upon again.

Crazy Fast Printing

The other thing that is impressive about the printer and that helps on the energy efficiency front, is how quickly it prints. Dell claims the printer: delivers letter-sized pages at a speed of up to 47 ppm (pages per minute) in both mono and color. (Actual print speeds will vary with use.) If you have a 10 page print job, it starts printing in about 8 seconds and is done entirely in about 20...heading back to sleep soon thereafter. And these capabilities add up. As Dell states on their site: Energy Star 1.1 qualified, the Dell 5130cdn Color Printer reduces power consumption up to 31% compared to the previous-generation Dell 5110cn with the new EA-Eco Toners.

Duplex Printing Lowers Paper Consumption

Lowering energy-burn is important, but the thing we probably like most about the printer is the ability to make duplex (or two-sided printing) the default for all users. As a company, we try not to print very often, but this makes us feel a lot better when we do. This capability slows down the print job to a mere 37 pages per minute (still very fast), but dramatically cuts down on the amount of paper used. It is not a clear 50% reduction because it doesn’t make sense to use this capability in every instance (printing a PowerPoint for example), but by having duplex as the default, users have to make the choice to switch to single sided printing instead of vice versa.

We’re Not the Only Ones Who Like It

The winner of our giveaway is totally loving the printer as well.  en-Gauge, Inc . is very cool business making electronic monitoring solutions for life safety products like fire extinguishers and medical oxygen. They are a leading player in the “Internet of Things” revolution (smart devices connecting via the Internet) and they have been very impressed by the printer as well...especially the speed of printing and the ability to make duplex printing the default.

Stay tuned, as we’re working to arrange an upcoming podcast with some experts at Dell to discuss how they are working with businesses to make the entire print process inside companies as sustainable as possible.  NOTE:  Dell provided Green Collar with the printer free of charge for our participation in the social media giveaway.

If you're like me, you've been watching the Natural Gas Fracking situation unfold like a slow motion train wreck, devastating large parts of the country. The concept is that the gas companies buy drilling rights on people's property (which is very attractive for the landowner's because they get some good coin!), then the gas companies pump massive amounts of water and chemicals way underground to crack (or fracture - hence frack) the earth in order to release natural gas deposits.

The problem is that this is poisoning the ground water in many communities to such an extent that residents can often light their tap water on fire (no joke!). Imagine the carcinogens and poisons that people are ingesting even if the water never gets to the flammable stage. I thought you would enjoy this video explaining how fracking works and why it is so dangerous to our society. Good music, good beat, informative....what's not to like? Help spread this one around! - -

Very cool new high speed electric "bus" from Holland.  I'd like to see more about how to get in and out of it, but I would like to take a ride on one of these at 150 mph!

 

I just ran across this site, thanks to SmartPlanet .  It is by Streetfilms.org and is called Moving Beyond the Automobile .  It has excellent, high quality short films educating you on proven  methods for streamlining municipal transportation and helping the environment.  

 I watched the one on Rapid Transit Busses (it won't work in Boston because our roads are old cowpaths, but very cool idea in cities with lots of land). Scroll down below the first video to see all of their videos.

 

 
Sorry for not embedding it, my antique CMS doesn't play nice with iframes.

Let me know what you think.