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Xerox creates self-recycling paper
"We were surprised by our results. Nobody looks at the ephemeral information going through peoples waste baskets."
- Brinda Dalal, Xerox anthropologist
Palo Alto, CA - During the 1970s, researchers at Xeroxs Palo Alto Research Center explored a software technique called ғgarbage collection used for recycling computer memory. The technique allowed the automatic reuse of blocks of memory that were storing unused programs and data. Today an anthropologist at the center, Brinda Dalal, has become a self-styled ԓgarbologist to assist in a joint effort with chemists at the Xerox Research Center of Canada to develop an ԓerasable paper system. The goal is to recycle paper documents produced by the companyԒs copiers potentially an unlimited number of times.
The printed information on the document "disappears" within 16 hours. The documents can be reused more quickly by simply placing them in the copier paper tray. The researchers said that individual pieces of paper had been printed on up to 50 times, and the only current limit in the process appears to be paper life.