DUPLEX PRINTING

Duplex printing is a feature that allows automatic printing on both sides of a sheet of paper. Print devices without this capability can only print single-sided. This is called simplex printing. Simplex printers can still print duplex jobs; however, the user has to manually turn the print job over and re-initialize printing of the document, which interrupts the current workflow and is time consuming.

Duplex printing offers several benefits. By printing in duplex you can:

Save money
Duplex printing helps you save money on printing supplies by cutting your paper use by up to 50%.

Save time
Automatic duplex printing saves your time by allowing you to print double-sided without having to wait and reinsert the pages by yourself.

Save space
Less paper takes up less room.

Shrink your carbon footprint
Beyond the trees that are converted into paper, the transportation and production of paper also has an environmental impact.

Claudia Thompson reports in her book ‘Recycled Papers: The Essential Guide’ (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), on an estimate calculated by Tom Soder, a graduate student in the Pulp and Paper Technology Program at the University of Maine. He assumes that, based on a mixture of softwoods and hardwoods, 40 feet (1 foot = 0,30480 meters) tall and six to eight inches (1 inch = 0,0254 meters) in diameter, it would take a rough average of 24 trees to produce a ton of printing and writing paper, using the kraft chemical (freesheet) pulping process.

If it is assumed that the groundwood process is about twice as efficient in using trees, then we can estimate that it takes about 12 trees to make a ton of groundwood and newsprint. (The number will vary somewhat because there is often more fiber in newsprint than in office paper and there are several different ways of making this type of paper.)

All assumptions are based on the book ‘Recycled Papers: The Essential Guide’ from Claudia Thompson (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992).

* One ton of uncoated virgin (non-recycled) printing and office paper uses 24 trees.

* A ‘pallet’ of copier paper (20 lb sheet weight (1 lb = 0.4536 kg)) contains 40 cartons and weighs 1 ton. Therefore, one carton (10 reams) of 100 percent virgin copier paper uses 0.6 trees; one tree makes 16.67 reams of copy paper or 8,333.3 sheets.