Tokyo-based Nakabayashi offers everything from bookbinding services, child car seats and office products. But the newest (and certainly coolest) product of the 2,000-man company is an in-office machine , which turns used copier paper into toilet rolls, right there in the office. Brillant.
The toilet paper machine is able to produce two rolls per hour from around 1,800 sheets (or 7.2kg) of used A4-sized paper, which would have usually been just thrown away. At 600kg, it seems to be a dangerously massive piece of hardware.
Distribution in Japan begins in August and Nakabayashi wants to sell 60 units in the first year. Good luck with that, as each machine comes with a price tag of $95,000. Unfortunately, there is no information on operating costs yet, but I can’t imagine these being in proportion.
Via Mainichi [JP]
You can buy a shitload (no pun intended) of TP for $95k!
Yet another example of Green = stupid. Neither the economics nor the energy savings of this make sense. Since Japan leads the US in Math scores I’m guessing
125%100% of these will be purchased by US companies.Are you stating that all things green and environmentally friendly are bad? In this case, I think this is a terrible idea as all office paper can be recycled as is by large companies who can do it efficiently. But in general, environmental initiatives are a good thing.
Not at all but we seem to think green = good but that is not always true. In this example I don’t believe the savings (economic or enviornmental) justify this thing. The only good it will serve is to help people who feel guilty over wasting so much paper. Why not add a feature to Outlook that prevents printing emails? Or maybe automatically bill their department twice the cost of printing when they print an email (consider it stupid tax). That’s an environmental initiative that would make sense and cost far less than $95,000.
To me it’s like choosing paper over plastic to cut down on plastic in the landfill or plastic over paper to save trees. The best choice is to use a reusable bag. So instead of figuring out how to spend 95k to make 4160 rolls of toilet paper (assuming non-stop usage 8 hours per work day for one year) let’s tackle the real problem instead of trying to make ourselves feel like we’re doing something meaningful.
Never mind the fact that the production of this machine more than offsets any envionrmental benefit is has. I would guess that the energy spent on the repairman traveling to fix a broken unit and the transportation of the replacement parts will alone negate the “good” of this enviornmental initiative.
I guess you could say it’s good initiative but poor judgement to purchase one of these “green monsters.”
If it is inefficient and ineffectual then it’s not green by default. Just because it recycles doesn’t mean it’s green.
And by the way- mentioning repairmen driving and the cost of the machine is an unbalanced argument if you “accidentally” omit the impact of large scale paper production.
People thought (and still think) seat belts were dumb- and there were even seat belt innovations that were dangerous- but because people first started thinking safe (even to drive sales) eventually safety became a priority with the population- the same thing will happen with green technology even if you want to believe otherwise.
Did you read my point about not printing emails? Not sure how that’s omiting anything. I’m known as the paper nazi in my office because I question every time someone uses the printer. If people would stop printing things “just in case” we wouldn’t have 1800 pieces of paper to recycle every hour to make 2 tiny rolls of toilet paper. Hard Drives are cheap so “save it don’t print it.”
Where EVER did they get the idea to turn office memos into toilet paper?!?!
Who hasn’t wanted to wipe their ass with a TPS report?
Office memo’s start out from toilet paper…………..
first paper to go into the machine…memos from my boss! Always thought there was nothing but crap on those things, so hey, why not issue toilet paper instead! 95K is steap but hey we know that Japan is rich right?
Memos from the C.E.O. just became more meaninful.
Always, ALWAYS remove staples.
What’s this do for the Pink Slip???????????
bet it’s nothing like charmin…
Maybe they turn into maxi pads…
Every US gov office should have at least one, considering the amount of B.S. they pump out.. Now at least, it has use on one end!!!!!!!!!!!
Just because this thing is expensive doesn’t mean green is expensive. It’s cheaper to light my yard with off-grid solar LED lights than to string up electricity and replace incandescent bulbs. It’s cheaper to recycle aluminum than to mine and extract and refine anew.
Did we stop computer research because the first one cost several million and took up an entire basement in a building and used more electricity than a small town? This may be the first model, but eventually it could be so efficient that people will be doing this at home with machines that cost $500 and pay for themselves in 2 years. (Although I’m certain they’ll have to work out how to get rid of the toner, or everyone will have black butts.)
Seems to me the costs to produce and maintain all these green energy products are outweighing the motivation to acquire such green products or use them. With all the money the government pouring in to give incentives to buy and use green products is it to our best interests not knowing if we are doing more harm than good. With the Pro’s and Cons debating one another , its all to confusing to the benefit’s.
“The toilet paper machine is able to produce two rolls per hour from around 1,800 sheets (or 7.2kg) of used A4-sized paper, which would have usually been just thrown away”
What? Is it just in the U.S. where companies recycle their paper? It’s been many years since I’ve seen a company of reasonable size that doesn’t recycle. Certainly a company that could afford this thing would be big enough to recycle, so what is this for?
Hard core ecofreaks just wipe their butts with used copy paper!
Does anyone else think this is the most useless machine ever invented? A quick visit to http://www.toiletpaperworld.com showed that for $95,000 you can buy nearly 140,000 rolls of toilet paper!
Hmmm… 7.2 kg of paper to produce 2 rolls that weigh less than 1 kg? Sounds pretty wasteful to me. What happens to the excess poundage, and how much water does it need?
Plus, this from a country that has the fanciest bidet-style toilets in the world, supposedly negating the need for TP in the first place.
I’ll give them an A for ingenuity, but a D for practicality.
remember first computer was this big, long way huh?… good start, go green
great…finishing touch? print comics on the new tp and the inmates can read while they talk crap about the system.buy the machine, the jail system sure has enough paper to feed it, so it should pay for its self in a couple years, with the never ending line at the prison gates…..