Cradle to cradle paper

An innovative project by Banner Business Supplies closes the loop on office paper by supplying copier paper manufactured from a customer's own waste paper. Banner collects waste paper from the office (both confidential and general waste), securely shreds and de-inks it and transforms it back into blank paper for delivery back to the office it came from.

According to Banner, Closed Loop Paper uses 50% less water, 60% less energy causes 70% less air pollution than virgin paper. The process uses no bleach and the manufacturing process is fully audited. It's an impressive service - but it does depend on the customer having sufficient volume of waste paper to make the process viable. Closed Loop Paper was developed in response to demand from HMRC and currently processes around 25,000 tonnes per year.

As more organisations try to reduce their reliance on hard copy, I can foresee issues caused by the declining supplies of paper from single customers. But this concept would work really well across a whole business park or even a town or city, creating local employment opportunities as well as reducing transport impacts by recycling paper as close as possible to where the waste originates.

Single charger breakthrough for mobiles

Most of us have a drawer full of obsolete chargers at home, but this needless waste could soon be a thing of the past because in future it will be possible for manufacturers to ship new phones without chargers. The major mobile phone operators have jointly agreed on a micro USB standard for all mobile phone chargers. The scheme includes Orange, Telefonica, Vodafone, 3, AT&T, mobilkom Austria, T-Mobile, Telenor Telstra, Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, LG and Sony Ericsson.

The scheme was announced with week by Rob Conway of the GSM Association. He didn’t say when the certified compatible charger will appear but the GSMA has set a target to ship 50 per cent of phones with this charger by 2012.

Some commentators are concerned that applications like high definition video will need a better connector than micro USB. But even if a second connector is needed for these, any kind of standardisation is a step forward.