Epson Stops making Laser Printers

upnorth · Nov 28, 2022

Japanese electronics and printer maker Epson announced this month that it will end the sale and distribution of laser printer hardware by 2026, citing sustainability issues.

According to the company, inkjets have a "greater potential" than laser printers to make "meaningful advances" when it comes to the environment. The company already halted laser printer sales in many markets, but continued in Asia and Europe. Even though new hardware would be unavailable everywhere, Epson said it would continue to support consumers with consumables and spare parts. "As a company we're totally committed to sustainable innovation and action, and inkjets simply use less energy and fewer consumable parts," explained Epson sales and marketing manager Koichi Kubota in canned statement. "While laser printers work by heating and fusing toner to a page, Epson's Heat-Free inkjet technology consumes less electricity by using mechanical energy to fire ink onto the page."

"Our printing business will from now put the focus on inkjet," added Kubota. A 2019 Epson blog post claimed its inkjets consume 85 percent less energy than similar-speed laser printers.

Epson stops making laser printers for sustainability reasons

Inkjet is the future, claims Japanese printer maker

www.theregister.com

show-Zi · Nov 28, 2022

Which is more environmentally friendly, a laser gun or a water gun? With that in mind, this decision makes a lot of sense.

entropism · Nov 28, 2022

I'd be fine using inkjets, if companies didn't charge more for the ink than they do for the printers. I bought a color laser printer (Dell, made by Brother) for $99 like 4 years ago. I changed the toner cartridges once since then, and it cost me $40 total. An inkjet would have added at least another 0 on that number.

upnorth · Nov 30, 2022

There was a time when laser printers were a luxury. High prices pushed them out of the budgets of most homes and small businesses decades ago, but they eventually became more affordable. But now, printer-vendor Epson is turning its back on the technology in favor of inkjet alternatives and self-bestowed sustainability cred.

As noted by The Register on Monday, Epson announced last week that it will stop selling and distributing laser printers by 2026, affecting both its consumer and business users. The Seiko-owned company proudly declared that the move is being done in the name of "sustainability," but the company still has a long way to go in that department.

Epson's recent announcement touts a "commitment to sustainability," as well as Epson's planned 100 billion yen (about $722.2 million) investment into "sustainable innovation"—while also plugging its latest printers, of course. But this company's strategic shift doesn't feel like as grand of a green step as Epson's PR reps would like you to believe.

We don't have to tell you about the inherent environmental concerns around home and business printing. An oft-cited 2012 study reported that 375 million ink and toner cartridges enter US landfills annually, which doesn't even touch on the paper and energy consumption. But people and businesses need to print things, and printer businesses and their employees have a need to keep those businesses alive. So we don't blame Epson for seeking a way to make its printer business appear greener. But we do lament it continuing to ignore a large environmental concern with its business that it could easily address.

As we reported in August, Epson has bricked printers over purportedly oversaturated inkpads, even if the printer would physically work otherwise. Epson does this, it says, because ink could leak throughout the printer. But designing products to stop functioning, also known as planned obsolescence, is a big no-no for green tech. We shudder to think of the number of functioning Epson printers that were thrown in the garbage by less technically trained users who didn't know the device was still usable. This throwaway mindset is disturbingly commonplace in the printer industry. In 2020, for example, HP bricked ink cartridges outside of its Instant Ink subscription program and has also used DRM to block non-HP ink cartridges from working in HP printers.