Problem:
Paper – a thing of the past you might think. However, wherever you look, you still see it being used all over the world. Why? Because it is still cheap and easy to produce, vast industries and money making systems have evolved around its production, and many generations have simply become used to it without having been provided with an alternative that makes the switch away from paper easy enough and without much additional effort involved. Recycling tries to do its part in solving the paper problem, but there is still a lot of room for improvement; “room” that might be there in the first place, because if there would not be a paper problem, the recycling industry might have less to do. However, even if the recycling industry would be perfect, it would still depend on another problem: the willingness of people to recycle.
Solution:
Instead of trying to get people to recycle paper, another option might be to use the paper that has already been produced for longer periods of time. Imagine that you print a couple of pages worth of text because you are not used to “reading” on a digital screen; its just more comfortable to print the pages and read them in a paper format. However, once you are done reading, what if the text would disappear after a certain point in time, giving you the chance to reuse these pieces paper to reprint other stuff? We know already that disappearing ink exists (http://chemistry.about.com/od/demonstrationsexperiments/ss/disappearink.htm + http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/bf21/), however, this technology has not been perfected yet, which is the reason for why the time factor – in other words, how long the ink is actually visible – cannot be controlled yet. Nevertheless, once that particular problems is solved through advanced chemistry, the brigs would be laid for a new generation of printers that would allow you to reuse the same paper again, and again, and again (the printers would probably have to be able to treat the paper with some sort of chemicals as well to reproduce a baseline state every time the paper is being reused). Although these new printers might not solve the entire paper problem, they might offer an easy cure until generational shifts take place and thus the habits of each generation.
The Idea Library 