Page 249 - Design for Environment A Guide to Sustainable Product Development

Electr onic Equipment Industries 225

FIGURE 11.2 Xerox High
Yield Business Paper™
requires less wood, water,
chemical, and energy inputs.

is produced by mechanically grinding wood into papermaking pulp
instead of using the traditional chemical pulping process. As a result,
90% of the tree by weight ends up in the High Yield Business Paper
versus only 45% in traditional digital printing paper. In addition,
High Yield Business Paper requires less water and chemicals and
is produced in a plant using hydroelectricity to partially power the
pulping process. Optimized for digital printing, the new paper is
lighter in weight, resulting in significant savings on postage and
energy for paper shipments.
The key breakthrough was achieved at Xerox’s Media and Com-
patibles Technology Center in Webster, N.Y., which was established
in 1964 with the mission to ensure that Xerox papers are optimized
for use in Xerox products, thus preventing waste and product
downtime. Mechanical paper is widely used in offset printing, e.g.,
for newspapers, but there were two problems that prevented it
from running reliably on printers and copiers—excessive dust con-
tamination and curling of the paper due to heat. According to Bruce
Katz, who led the Xerox research team, the mechanical paper curled
because the back and the front of the paper shrank at different rates.
Working with a paper mill and employing statistical techniques, the
team developed a patented process that better distributed the fibers
on both sides of the paper, reducing the curl. They also developed a
surface treatment at the mill to minimize the paper dust.