Will's Thoughtstream

I was really surprised to learn a few years ago that when an environmental impact lifecycle analysis is done of an everyday personal printer, the biggest environmental impact turns out not to be the manufacturing of the printer, the ink cartridges, the packaging, or disposal of the electronic waste: the biggest environmental impact actually turns out to be the paper used during printing. Printing less definitely helps. But in addition, consistently printing on both sides of each sheet of paper is an easy and quick way to halve the amount of paper you use.

There's lots of printers that come with the ability to print on both sides of a sheet of paper. A few all-in-one style printers from HP that include this ability are the HP Photosmart C7280 All-in-One (about $240), HP Officejet 9110 All-in-One (about $400), and HP LaserJet 3390 All-in-One (about $425). Laser printers tend to be even more of a bonus from an environmental and economic perspective. My mom owns an HP laser printer, and she buys one toner cartridge every couple of years for about $80. Compared to the inkjet printers I've used, that's a lot fewer replacement cartridges.

If you just want a simple printer, without the scanner, copier, fax features of an all-in-one, then two HP products that come with automatic duplex printing are the HP Deskjet 6940dt Color Inkjet Printer (about $120), and the HP Deskjet 6980dt Color Inkjet Printer (about $160).

With any of these printers, it's important that your printer settings are set to use the auto-duplexer. Under Windows XP, go to Settings->Printers and Faxes. Right-click on your printer and choose Printing Preferences. Under the Finishing tab, check Print on both sides, and underneath check Automatic. Then click OK to save your settings.

If you already have an HP printer, and it doesn't support automatic duplex printing, check out this video for a demo of how to manually duplex print.