Label Printer Tips, News & Reviews | Labelzone blog

Trying to get your head around colossal amounts of data can be migraine-inducing, if not completely nauseating (for me anyway). Thankfully, data visualisation (showing complex relationships in multi-dimensional data) junkies are creating elegant diagrams that communicate messages so clearly and effectively. Its ability to convey statistics and trends that might otherwise be considered boring or trivial has lead to a boom in web sites devoted to showcasing these remarkable things. In this post, we look at 11 stunning data visualisation diagrams.

Roger Federer 10 Year Grand Slam History – sacks08 on Flickr

Country Codes of the World – historyshots

Animal Experiments in the UK – GDS Digital on Flickr

Swine Flu Deaths – blprnt_van on Flickr

Kraft vs Cadbury – GDS Digital on Flickr

Who Rules The Social Web – InformationIsBeautiful

Facebook Growth – Mashable

Haiti Aftermath – Good

Pixellabs – Browser Wars

History of Pink Floyd – 802.11

The Last 10 Years – New York Times

Zara Wood, also known as Woody, is an artist and illustrator living in Brighton. Previously based in London and Melbourne, Zara originally studied Fine Art and began illustrating in 2001. Deemed as a prolific and versatile artist, Zara works in a variety of mediums and scales, from miniature drawings to large free-standing cardboard sculptures. Whether drawing with a digital pen or making intricate boxed dioramas there is a beautiful hand crafted honesty to her work.

Her Star Gaze collection became the most successful artist range Topshop has ever launched

Commissioned by editorial, publishing and fashion clients in Europe and Australia, Zara also designs her own range of limited edition design-led products stocked in gallery and museum shops including the V&A and the Barbican in London, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney.

In December 2008 she collaborated with Topshop to create their most successful artist range ever launched. Most recently, Little Treasures, her collection of original art framed within vintage jewellery gained a hugely positive response with the first range selling out within days.

Click the images above to enlarge them.

A regular exhibitor in both group and solo shows, Zara’s character-focused work intimately engages with the viewer and has been described by Elle Magazine’s Francesca Gavin (November 2009), as so refreshingly sincere.

What’s your favourite project you’ve worked on?

I’ve enjoyed fashion projects with Stussy in Australia and working with Topshop on limited edition t-shirt ranges. Most recently I’ve loved making tiny originals to go in vintage lockets and brooches for my Little Treasures range. The response from the public has been lovely, if not somewhat overwhelming. When people order through my web shop they have the option of leaving a little message. You’d expect that people would write something about the delivery or dates, but I’ve received some really beautiful notes from people about the pieces. It’s very motivating and heart warming to get such lovely feedback.

What are you up to right now?

Well, trying to catch up on endless paper work as ever. I’m also just about to do a big mail out to all my web customers and clients. I designed a mini card with a new year’s resolution on it. Then I’ll be working on some new Little Treasures and cards for Valentines Day.

Click the images above to enlarge them.

What label printer do you have, and how is it helping?

I’ve got the Dymo Labelwriter 400 Turbo. I use it for all my web orders and mail outs. What’s fab about it, is it prints instantly. No funny warm up noises or trying to load label sheets. It really saves me a lot of time and the labels look very professional. A fellow illustrator I did a show with, has been using a Dymo for a few years now. We used it to do all the title/price labels for a large group show for the Brighton Fringe Festival. Because it’s compact and portable, we could take it down with a laptop to the venue and print what we needed. Simple and quick…

This is our first post of 2010, happy new year! Last month you may have seen the post I wrote about QR codes & the future of mobile marketing, where I looked at the innovative ways they’ve been used in advertising / environmental campaigns, and what the future might have in store. The N Building near Tachikawa station in Tokyo has had its facade adorned with QR codes where you can obtain the typical store information and download coupons, but what follows is simply stunning. Using an iPhone application specifcally developed for this project, you can follow a Twitter stream of what people are saying inside the building.

[vimeo width="500" height="400"]http://vimeo.com/8468513[/vimeo]

Point your phone at the building and its shape will be detected. Cartoon-characters are superimposed over it, then the iPhone’s GPS feature is used to track the location of each tweet.

The software isn’t available in the Apple app store; but you can get it on request. Head over to the Sonasphere site for further information.

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The Dymo LabelWriter 450 Turbo is a very attractive little printer and is supplied with equally attractive labelling software in the form of DYMO Label V8 on CD. It is powered exclusively by a mains power adaptor and ships with a USB cable, quick start guide, roll of 35 x 90mm address labels and a head cleaning card. There is no stand-alone option. This printer must be used in conjunction with a PC.

To begin with the software, when you launch Label V8 you find yourself looking at a pleasing layout, the design window being on the right with the usual formatting icons along the top, plus a three-tab selection area on the left. The first of these tabs offers a range of ready-made labels, primarily address and shipping labels, each of which includes a subset of smart layouts featuring symbols and instant place-holders for text, plus your logo if you have one. Under the heading ‘Speciality/Retail’ there is just one forlorn item, which is a CD label that would cover about one-third of a CD. Here again there is a subset of instant layouts allowing curved text in various arrangements. Three file folder labels and one badge label are also to be found, along with a miscellany of multi-purpose labels including one for a VHS/spine!

The second tab is called ‘Designer’ and this makes available all the objects required to design a label from scratch. An object may be dragged to the label or inserted by double-clicking it, its properties being altered by double-clicking the resulting field. These objects are:

1. An intelligent text box for importing addresses from your email address book. The fields thus created are populated automatically when you change to the third tab, called ‘Address Book’, wherein checkboxes may be ticked to indicate which addresses you wish to print.
2. A static text box for typing fixed text.
3. An automatic counter for serial numbering. You can choose any start number you like, and any increment, using the ‘Width’ setting to control the number of leading zeros. Text cannot be included incrementally but fixed ‘before’ and ‘after’ text can be included in any Windows font. There is also a ‘vertical text’ option of the kind which rotates the text line but not its characters.
4. A date and time stamp in any format you like, 12 or 24 hour clock, with optional ‘before’ and ‘after’ text in any Windows font. Now, don’t get excited when you see controls for ‘Font Colour’ and ‘Background Colour’ as these are just shades of grey, of course, the 450 Turbo not being a colour printer. Naturally, the date and time stamp is updated by the Windows clock each time your label is printed.
5. A barcode stamp with18 barcode formats to choose from. Source data can be fixed (typed directly) or linked to another label object. You can print the barcode with the ‘human readable’ equivalent above or below the code in any Windows font. The barcode may be rotated in 90 degree steps. The formats available are: Code 39 (in its various guises), Interleaved 2 of 5, UPC, EAN, Codabar and Code 39 Library in their various guises, UCC EAN 128, and ITF-14.
6. A shape object which can insert a square or an oblong, a circle or an oval, a horizontal or vertical line, and do each in a range of line thicknesses and greyscale interior fills. It has to be said that the Turbo 450 produces greyscale tones extremely well.
7. An image object which allows the insertion of a picture file or even the contents of the Windows clipboard, or alternatively the default image of a telephone. Care has to be taken when loading anything from the clipboard as Dymo Label 8 struggles for memory when a large amount has been placed there. Your image may be inserted with or without a border, rotated in 90 degree steps, and be protected from horizontal or vertical distortion by locking the aspect ratio.
8. Circular text, which allows text to follow a top arc, bottom arc, or full circle. A side arc is achieved by rotating the top arc through 90 degrees.
9. A gallery of 94 symbols arranged for quick access. It should be noted that these symbols are not of great industrial or commercial use, being mainly of a decorative bias.

Altogether, then, the software is very intuitive and truly graphical in nature, but there are some endearing quirks. For example, a conventional zoom control for enlarging the label itself is partnered with a zoom slider for magnifying the whole window. This slider is strangely satisfying to operate but of little use unless you have poor eyesight or an outsized monitor.

Another oddity, in my view, is ‘Mirror Image’ which frequently appears as a text option but doesn’t actually produce back-to-front text, as one might expect, instead producing upside-down text facing the original text. This would be fun if the end product looked like a reflection in a puddle but it doesn’t. In fact, if you type a word and select mirror image, then rotate the resulting ensemble through 180 degrees, you finish up with the same thing! But there does remain the amusing option of stretching the box horizontally until the words separate.

Moving to the printer itself, such a creditable job does it do that there is very little to say about it. The minimum font size is a tiny 4pt, which is faint but still readable, and the maximum font size is anything that fits the label. As for speed, in a quick test the printer took twelve seconds to produce ten typical address labels. Knocking off the two seconds download time, you are left with about one label per second. Pretty cool.

There is no electric cutter but a serrated blade provides good, clean tear-off.

In addition to the usual form-feed button there is a back-feed button to make easy work of disengaging the label prior to removing the roll from the printer.

Don’t look for an on/off switch, there isn’t one. One can only guess at the reasoning for this. Perhaps switching off the mains adaptor is considered greener and safer. Which, of course, is true. In any case, a ‘low power’ mode kicks in after a period of dormancy.

I found no user manual in the box, only a quick start guide, but the printer is just too simple to necessitate one and the software provides extensive help files.

In conclusion, the strength of this printer and its software lies in its user-friendliness. If you are intimidated by computers then the LabelWriter 450 Turbo, with its Dymo Label software Version 8, might just be the antidote you need.

What’s In The Box

• Adaptor and mains lead
• USB cable
• Quick-start guide
• Roll of 35 x 90mm address labels
• Label design software CD
• Head cleaning card

Dimensions and Supported Operating Systems

• Dimensions: 125 x 180 x 135mm
• Print Type: Direct thermal
• Supported Operating Systems: Windows XP, Vista, 7 and Mac OSx

Have you ever seen an image like this and wondered what it was? You could be forgiven for thinking you’re being forced into a Rorschach test (don’t worry, you’re not), and there’s a high chance we will be seeing a lot more of them in the very near future. It’s called a QR Code, read on to find out what it is and what it does.

What are QR Codes?

A Quick Response Code, or a QR Code is a type of two-dimensional barcode, except it’s capable of storing up to 100 times the data of its predecessor. Developed by the Japanese Denso Corporation in 1994, QR codes were intended for quick tagging in the manufacture of car parts. However, technology quickly evolved, and the way in which QR codes were used became more creative and diverse (more on that later). Their use in Japan is unsurprisingly widespread (on almost everything, so I’m told), as this advert for NTT DoCoMo mobile phones suggests:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxFR6r-Dqk4[/youtube]

How does it work?

This image below explains the code structure for how QR codes work; thankfully the process for you to actually use them is a lot more straightforward.

The camera on the majority of Japanese mobile phones was designed to read the data contained in a QR code; in the US & Europe the majority of handsets will require additional software capable of reading them.

QR Code-reading software for the iPhone

For a limited time only you can get Quickmark for free; which is an application for the iPhone to read both traditional and 2D barcodes. App store link

• Install and open your QR code-reading software
• Take a photo / point your camera at the QR code
• Depending on your handset, your phone’s browser will automatically start and redirect you to the URL or request for you to confirm you wish to visit the link.


As you can see from the screenshot on the right, Quickmark has some additional options for sharing your QR code including a send to Twitter option, email and the ability to generate QR codes for contact information.

Please note, I haven’t used the following software so I have no idea how they work.

QR Code-reading software for Google Android

Google’s Product Search now includes a barcode scanner which is also capable of reading QR codes. At present, this only works in the US & UK, more information here

QR Code-reading software for all other devices

Beetagg Reader seems to support the vast majority of popular brands such as HTC, Nokia, iPhone and Blackberry; simply sign up and you’ll receive an SMS with a download link.

QR Code Generator list for creating your own

These are in abundance, a quick search returned the following:

• Beetag
• Kaywa
• ZXing Project

Creative examples of QR-Code usage & opportunities

This is the really interesting part. As smartphones grow in popularity, the higher the likelihood of advertising campaigns using QR-codes as part of its message. Let’s look at some examples of what’s already been done, and what could happen in the future.

Social Change – Bullying UK is the first charity to use QR codes this way (in the UK, at least). As part of its Anti-Bullying Poster Creator service, each poster created features several QR Codes. One of which directs you to the mobile-version of the poster, the other allows you to send a copy of the poster via MMS. You’re also provided the option to send it to a smorgasbord of social networks.

Enviromentally Friendly Campaigns - Eventbrite (an online event registration company) tested an event using QR codes for ticketing with the intention to reduce waste and increase efficiency (sadly their blog post is no longer online). On a similar note, I was reading a magazine and there was an advert for Siemens’ environmental policy, linked to from its QR code.

The Downright Weird – a Japanese firm called Ishinokoe had an ingenius idea for QL codes – embedding them on your gravestone. Anyone walking past your gravestone can find out who you are with the aid of their mobile phone. I can’t really see this one taking off in the UK.

Local Business Listings on Google – the search giant has just sent out up to 190,000 QR codes to the most searched-for business in its local directory. So if you start seeing these in the windows of a restaurant you’ve never visited before, it’s possible you’ll be able to read reviews on the spot.

Bands or artists could produce QR Codes for after exhibitions or concerts – if your budget doesn’t stretch to printed merchandise or CDs, why not print some codes to drive traffic to your website or an alternative shopping link? Or to go one further, like one band did..

Use them to take political swipes at your government – the Pet Shop Boys attacked the UK’s Big Brother surveillance laws by featuring over 2,000 real QR codes. Pause the video below to test the QR codes for yourself, they all link to various articles about personal freedoms and the like.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dotvLcWV3jw[/youtube]

Increase your own visibility and ‘person brand’ – want more Facebook friends or followers on Twitter? How about having a t-shirt printed with a QR Code that leads to its URL? With the Facebook App, you install it on your profile and it generates the t-shirt. The design isn’t particularly pretty though.

As a more traditional alternative, you could create your vCard details in Outlook, upload it, create a QR Code of that URL and display it on your business card. It’s certainly a cheaper approach to something like Dymo’s Cardscan. For further information, 2d Code has created a decent example here.

What the future has in store

Color Code Technologies showcased its new Colour Construct Code (CCC) back in November at the Mobile Asia Congress, Hong Kong. This is capable of storing much more data and doesn’t require an internet connection in order to access it. These colour codes can also be printed on inkjet printers, resulting in easier and more cost-effective distribution.

One recent example involved a new record by Japanese group ‘The Tenka’. A colour QR code was included on a promotional leaflet and when scanned, the data was converted into a song and stored on the phone. According to 2d Code, it’s possible to add password encryption and expiration dates, making it ideal for a broad spectrum of promotions. The site also goes on to say that the decoder is available from the Nokia Ovi Store for a limited number of handsets.

Please feel free to share your own examples of creative QR code usage in the comments below.

A comprehensive school in the Mendips, south of Bath, has developed an international reputation for the students’ pioneering work with orchids. Successes this year have included a gold medal at the Chelsea Flower Show, a school expedition to the Himalayas and a recent trip to South Africa. The Writhlington School Orchid Project has been using Labelzone’s Labelstation for its horticultural labelling activites for many years.

Thirteen year old Zoë Parfitt and twelve year old Zoe Barnes have been to Durban, over half term, to share the skills they have learnt at Writhlington School at a major international conservation conference.

The girls ran a workshop on orchid micropropagation at the BGCI (Botanic Gardens Conservation International) international congress. Both students are active members of Writhlington’s Orchid Project and were invited to take part in the event after their success at the Chelsea Flower Show. Click the images below to enlarge them.

The girls’ trip to Durban has been funded by the award of two bursaries from the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) and donations from both The Somerset Gardens’ Trust and Norton Radstock Rotary Club.

Zoe Barnes explained “We are the youngest people ever to win RHS bursaries and it was our job to represent the best of Britain’s young gardeners. We taught botanical garden staff from all over the world how to grow orchids the way we do at Writhlington and also visited the West Park School to help them to set up their own orchid project.”

According to teacher, Simon Pugh-Jones, “It is a great honour to be asked to run a workshop at such a prestigious event and I would like to thank Dr Lauren Gardiner at Kew Gardens who has been instrumental in our involvement with BGCI. The girls worked hard to prepare for the trip and got lots of help from the rest of the orchid club. As well as the workshop the girls were able to work with the staff of Durban Botanic Gardens, gave a lecture to local horticultural societies and had a chance to look for orchids in the wild”

“Exploring the bush to look for orchids was really fun.” according to Zoë Parfitt. “We found eighteen different orchid species including one species not recorded in the area before. It was also great to see a Zebra, Wildebeest, Impala and Monkey while looking for orchids.”

You can follow the girls’ story by following their Blog on the Royal Horticultural Society website.

Table of contents

• Printing from a Brother QL-560
• Printing from a Dymo Labelwriter
• Printing from a Canon iR2016
• Creating PDFs from any file with the iPhone
• In conclusion

Eurosmartz recently made an update to its Print & Share iPhone application, one of which we thought was worth highlighting. The Dymo Labelwriter range has been added to its officially supported devices, which we’ve decided to put to the test. Additionally, you might be curious if alternative brands of label printers will work with Print n Share, more on that coming up. But first, what is Print & Share?

What is Print N Share?

Print & Share is an application for the ever-ubiquitous iPhone, allowing you to print emails, files, web pages, contacts, the whole shebang. It also enables you to share documents with your desktop computer (both PC/Mac compatible) or laptop.

How it works

In order to print from your iPhone, a small piece of software called WePrint needs to be installed on your computer (available from the Eurosmartz website on the previous URL), which will run as the print server. Please note, all the screenshots shown will enlarge when you click on them.

Above is a screenshot of WePrint. See those settings for Server Address & Server Port? They will have to correspond with your Print & Share settings on your iPhone in order for everything to run properly. On the left-hand side you’ll hopefully see the list of available printers.

Back in Print N Share, the first screen you’ll see (as above) is from its main menu. The options for printing are:

• Files – this could be a Word document, a spreadsheet, a PDF etc.
• Emails – from here you can print any contents of an email or accompanying attachments
• Web Pages – for important information to read later
• Contacts – print a one-off, multiple copies or sequential batches of numerous contacts
• Images – an individual picture you’ve taken, a gallery, screenshots or any other image saved to your phone
• Camera – you can take a picture and instantly print it, there and then.

So let’s put it to the test.

QL-560 – printing a sequential label run of 1 contact

Using your contacts, simply select the one you wish to print, as demonstrated in the screenshot below.

Choose your printer from the list presented.

From the far-right screen, simply hit print and watch the magic happen! We prepared a video clip in order to show you the QL-560 doing its thing.

[vimeo width="480" height="360"]http://www.vimeo.com/7432469[/vimeo]

Dymo Labelwriter 400

As for the Dymo Labelwriter 400, it’s much the same process except for one really useful detail. Since it was added to the list of officially supported devices, Print N Share kindly includes all the Dymo Labelwriter Label sizes as selectable templates. Huzzah!

In the left-hand side image above, you’ll see we’re printing a contact. Notice contact layout at the bottom? 99012 is the SKU for this label type (the Large Address / Shipping Labels). Selecting the contact layout will give you a more comprehensive list (see right screenshot). Here’s the result:

[vimeo width="480" height="360"]http://vimeo.com/7434564[/vimeo]

It’s really that simple.

Printing an image from a Canon iR2016 laser printer

Now, let’s see how we get on printing an image with a Canon laser printer.

From the Print N Share main menu, go to Images > Photos and select your chosen image (right).

Hit print, and you’ll see the screen on the left. Here you’ll have the option to select which printer to use and the number of copies desired. You can also alter the image size and orientation, but for the purpose of this exercise we left the defaults.

[vimeo width="480" height="360"]http://www.vimeo.com/7435213[/vimeo]

But wait, there’s more..

One final trick that you might find useful is the ability to create PDFs on the fly from your iPhone. This does however rely on you having a virtual PDF driver printer on your PC (or perhaps the software on a thumb drive if you’re out & about a lot).

In the screenshot above, note the middle Jaws PDF Creator. By selecting this, a PDF is created, ready for emailing or viewing on your iPhone at a later date. Nifty, eh?

The Final Verdict

Print n Share packs an impressive amount of functionality into a small application (we’re still a little surprised at how much it can do!). It’s intuitive, elegant and robust; and an absolute snip at $6.99 from the iTunes App Store. We didn’t encounter a single error or problem in running all three tests on the printers either.

Cynics might argue that this sort of functionality should’ve been expected as a standard iPhone feature, but until that day, Print N Share will do everything you’ll want it to and more.

Print Quality:
Print Speed:
Versatility:
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The Brady BMP21 handheld label printer is a robust, stand-alone thermal label printer designed for the professional user. Using interchangeable cartridges which are compatible with the IDPal and LabPal printers, it is designed to give labelling facility primarily to engineers in electrical and communications environments, and for general industrial use, producing durable labels which can last at least five years outdoors.

At this point it is worth identifying some of the physical features which differentiate this printer from, say, the IDXpert. In addition to its visual and ergonomic appeal and comfortable ‘hand feel’, which surprisingly is not spoiled by the presence of various bumper guards, it has a symmetrically operated manual cutter which will suit both left-handed and right-handed users. A nice feature is that when operated, this cutter does not send your label fluttering to the floor but instead retains it until removed. Further, the BMP21 accommodates a range of handy attachments such as an LED torch, a desk-top stand, a belt strap, and a powerful magnet for securing the printer to metal surfaces. There is only one attachments dock, so if both magnet and light are needed, a combined fitting is available. The magnet is very powerful. If you experience otherwise, you probably haven’t removed the ‘keeper’ which maintains the magnet’s strength yet dampens its effect while not in use.

In addition to wire ID labels and continuous labels, the BMP21 will print patch panel and terminal block labels (horizontally or vertically, with or without auto-numbering) and perma-sleeve polyolefin heat-shrink sleeve.

There is just one font available, regular or bold, in the following sizes: 6pt, 9pt, 14pt, 20pt, 28pt and 40pt. Some of the characters come close to having look-alikes, such as capital O and zero, lower case L and numeral 1 etc. but only if the observer is inexcusably casual. A good range of accented and international characters is available. Text may be reproduced in multiple lines.

Alphanumerical incremental serial numbering is limited to just one serial number per label and three digits per number, but the system does allow increments of 1 to 99 and facilitates continued numbering onwards from your last serial number. A nice feature is that after each numbered label is printed you can choose whether to cut it off or continue printing. To give an understanding of how the numbering system behaves, the numerical component of a mixed serial number takes priority over the alphabetical component. In other words, counting upwards from B9 will continue to increment the number rather than incrementing the B to C. On the other hand, if AY is the start number, the A will very soon increment to B.

The printer can generate two types of bar code: code 39 and code 128 but only one per label and only in auto-fit size. The code is not reproduced on the LCD, of course, the bars being generated at print time. There appears to be no date/time stamp facility on this printer.

Multiple copies of a label may be printed and up to twelve label designs may be saved in memory. There is a choice of sizing units (inches or millimetres) and, as one would expect, a battery state indicator. The printer can be powered by six AA cells or a mains power adaptor.

The BMP21 cartridges, which drop into place easily and are secured by a small lever, are automatically detected and identified by the printer for menu option purposes. When no cartridge is present, care should be taken not to damage the contact springs that allow the printer to identify which cartridge has been inserted, as they are a little exposed. Only continuous type label is printed (not die-cut), also self-laminating wire markers and heat-shrink sleeve. The maximum label width is 0.75in (20mm) and maximum roll length 21ft (7.3m)

The BMP21 label printer is for stand-alone printing only, having no computer connectivity. The display, a 45 x 23mm mono LCD, features a status bar and backlight. This status bar, located at the bottom of the display, shows the font and printing mode in use, as follows: Banner Landscape, Banner Portrait, Wire, Terminal Block, Patch Panel, and Fixed Length label (which forces font size to fit). The BMP21 comes with ‘ABC’ alphabetical keyboard layout only. A Shift key gives access to a range of symbols, leaving a Caps Lock key to enable upper and lower case printing, its status being displayed on the LCD. The keyboard gives access to a handful of the more common symbols but a good selection of electrical, electronic and other symbols is available through the menu. Within this library there is no fast route to any particular group of symbols but using the repeat key facility and observing the X-Y scrollbars allows fairly rapid selection. In conclusion, the BMP21 appears to be a thoroughly useful asset for the installation engineer and technician, having been well thought out to complement other printers such as the IDXpert.

So who just came for the free bacon roll then?

Once again the Brother UK and LabelZone team arrived in Coventry for the penultimate ELEX show of the year.  ELEX, in case you were wondering is a chance for electricians to see all the latest electrical products from leading manufacturers’. 2009 has been a great year for us on the show circuit, the feedback we received was good and attendees grasped the opportunity to see some of the latest industry gear.

The location for this ELEX show was the impressive Ricoh Arena, home of the less-impressive Championship-dwellers Coventry City (sorry, but you know..)

Once again the key focus of the event was the PT-7600, which superseded the PT-2480.  The new improved features of the PT-7600 (Ni-Cad battery & USB connectivity for example) were well received and genuinely give some benefit to the user.  The show stock sold out this time round so for the final event of the year in Sandown Park in Surrey, we’ll be loading up the stand ready for buyers to take a printer away with them.

Today is Blog Action Day, an annual event held every October 15th where bloggers unite to post about specific issues affecting us all (some more directly than others). Since its creation in 2007, topics have included the environment, poverty and this year brings us to climate change.We thought you might be interested to know what preventative measures we take to combat it.

The Problem

Please forgive us for this, but in the past we were guilty of throwing away approximately 2,000 cubic litres of cardboard per week; supplier shipping cartons were routinely dumped without a moment’s thought. There had to be a better way to deal with this excess waste, surely? Around this time it just so happened that we were working towards our ISO accreditations, one of which was the 14001 Environmental Management Standard. In a nutshell, the aim was to minimise the negative effect our operations have on the environment.

The Solution

By investing in an industrial cardboard shredder, we were able to shred waste cardboard for use as packing outgoing orders which eliminated the need for the void fill we were previously using, and took our cardboard waste to practically zero. Tech support evangelist and quality manager Mike explains “With a relatively small investment in the cardboard shredder, the company has made an almost 100% reduction in the amount of cardboard we dumped. In addition, we no longer purchase polystyrene void fill chips that clearly have a negative impact on the environment”. We also strive to reuse as many boxes as we can for shipping goods out to customers.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZueqVT4T4A[/youtube]

Whilst our contribution may only seem minimal, you have to look at the long term impact. We estimated that over a five year period, we would have dumped a collosal 500,000 cubic litres of good clean cardboard.

So, are you participating in Blog Action Day? If not, are you taking any measures to prevent climate change? Please let us know in the comments.