We've all grown so accustomed to paper (whether we're talking about our books, notebooks, printing paper, newspapers and yes, why not, even ol' TP) that we rarely think about the very serious industrial processes involved in creating it, as well as the fact that many trees have to be sacrificed in order to allow us to enjoy the advantages offered by this material.

However, it seems that the people over at Sanwa Newtec might have come up with a solution that will allow us to use the same sheet of “paper” time and time again, thus significantly cutting costs and, in the end, even helping the environment.

The respective solution consists of the RP-3100 II PrePeat printer, accompanied by a special type of paper that's manufactured from recycled materials (PET recipients, to be precise). The printer doesn't feature any ink, instead relies on a thermal head, which heats up the paper in order to “imprint” text or images at a pretty good resolution, of around 203 dpi.

What really makes this solution so interesting is that the sheets of paper are actually “rewritable” meaning that, by inserting them back into the printer, users will be able to erase the initial prints and then re-print other documents or photos on top of them. Furthermore, the rate of re-use seems to be pretty impressive, since a single sheet will apparently support up to 1,000 re-prints.

Quite obviously, the RP-3100 II printing system will lead to some very serious cost cutting, but it will also require a rather serious initial investment, the device itself selling for an estimate 500,000 Japanese Yen ($5,605.5), with each sheet of paper being priced at around 0.3 yen, for an estimate overall cost of the printing process of 3.5 yen per page (0.03 US dollars).


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