As part of Pippa’s and my home renovation project (more accurately described as “winter cleaning,” or “end-of-term housekeeping”) I broke down and junked two old printers that had let us down in the past year. I had been keeping them around the house on the superstitious premise that if you don’t throw them out right away, it attenuates the guilt of participating in the gross waste of resources that the contemporary printer industry entails.
Which led me to think: isn’t there an opportunity for a company to manufacture printers specifically designed to be reparable, reuseable, and refillable — precisely the attributes that the present instant-obsolescence printer industry resists? Can’t someone on the LazyWeb develop a standard chipset and reservoir design that do a good-enough job for most family and small-office purposes, that can be repaired and refilled rather than replaced? I’d love to buy such a thing, and I’ll bet it would represent a significant savings for most office purposes; maybe someone like the Blackspot Shoe people could make a go of it.