Brother: "We have to accept paper will become more precious"

Mike Dinsdale of printer giant Brother explains how the company is preparing for a paperless future

BusinessGreen: How would you summarise Brother's environmental policy?
Mike Dinsdale: It would be crazy as a business that intends to have a future not to be addressing environmental issues. We also feel that as a Japanese company environmental sustainability is hardwired into our culture. We decided as early as 1992 to green the organisation and we are still working on it because it is a continuous process, but we feel we are making good process.

How do you marry this environmental responsibility with the fact that IT, and printers in particular, retain a large energy and environmental footprint?
The reason for the slowness of the progress has been technology-based and due to the fact energy has just not been an issue for customers until very recently. However, we have supported a range of energy efficiency standards, including TCO99, Energy Star and Blue Angel, and have strived to improve our technology over time. While we have some way to go we are confident we are approaching a big breakthrough - we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Can you give more details about this breakthrough?
In 2005 Brother debuted a new line or long head ink jet printer prototype that produced 6x4inch colour photos, boasting 600dpi resolution at a rate of 170 pages a minute, and all with power consumption of 13.5w/h. That contrasts with current ink jet models that print 20 pages per minute at a lower res while using up to 40w/h or a colour laser printer that can use 600w/h. We've been working on commercialising the product, codenamed Project Cobra, and in January we announced that we would have the product available within two years.

How have you cut energy consumption in this product?
The fact is we have done the best we can in terms of current printer technologies' energy efficiency. We might be able to cut laser printers' energy use by 10 percent or so, but laser is by definition an energy hungry technology. If you are going to deliver real energy efficiency it has to come from ink jet and the trick is to make the print head long enough so it doesn’t have to move and the motor is taken out.

How long does the print head have to be?
The prototype we developed was 4.25inches, but the heads can be stacked together so in theory we could apply the same technology to larger paper sizes. If we produced a product for the office using the long head technology it would use about 60w/h. That would be 10 percent of the energy used by the typical laser printer.

When it comes to printers isn't energy consumption just half the story? Surely paper use means they are inherently damaging to the environment?
I'd totally agree. The paperless office is our goal. Currently the aim is to move to a paper-lite office, but ultimately we have to accept paper use could be challenged. There has been some research that found that if the population of China reaches the same standards of living as the developed economies then there aren't enough trees in the world to meet global paper demand. Something will need to be done.

So what can be done to reduce paper consumption?
Well, we have to accept we won't totally eliminate paper. Where it represents a legal instrument like a contract you can’t get rid of it, but where paper is used as work in progress we have to look at alternatives.

Isn't that something of an anathema to a printer manufacturer? Your business will have to change significantly.
We already have lots of paper eliminating technologies, such as scan to PDF and scan to email functionality that allows you to turn paper documents into electronic versions. But beyond that we have to accept paper will become more precious and we may have to move on [as a company].We are throwing a huge amount of money into research and the vast majority of it isn’t going into conventional printer technologies, but into new systems [that can replace paper printers]. We're looking at the idea of the paperless printer using reusable "paper" and we're also doing a lot of research into completely new systems, such as electronic paper and wearable displays where you could fit a display into your spectacles.

So how close are we towards realising the paperless office?
Internally we argue a lot about the timeline. It could take 15 years it could take seven. But we have got a lot of interesting developments in this area in the pipeline.

About Mike Dinsdale

Mike Dinsdale is communications director for Brother in the UK and is also responsible for the company's corporate social responsibility (CSR) agenda.

He joined Brother in 1974 to repair calculators and moved through various departments before founding Brother UK's service and call centre facilities. He was appointed marketing director in 2003 and became communications director in 2005.