Seems astonishing, but Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC) has developed a ‘reusable paper’ project where the printout on the paper fades away after 24 hours, thereby making it reusable.

Often, a printed document on a sheet of paper is used just once and tossed out. In other words, the document is printed out on the paper for a very short period and later the paper is disposed off in the recycle bin. Besides wasting the paper, it also involves tremendous waste of power as it takes 204,000 joules to make a new paper sheet and 114,000 joules of power to recycle it.

The project demo had taken place at the vaunted PARC, which has already produced several breakthroughs in computer graphics, networking, user interface, and other such technologies.

As far as the erasable paper is concerned, Xerox tied up with Xerox Research Centre of Canada to create a paper that can be reused over and over until it rips.

The paper discussed here is of a standard type that can be recycled and will cost only around 2 to 3 times the normal price of paper, or probably just 2 to 3 cents per page instead of a penny.

Compounds that change from colorless to colored when they take in a certain wavelength of light, was developed by PARC. The same paper then turns back to colorless over a certain time period. The light used for bringing the colors is ultraviolet in nature, which saves the page from running over an ink drum when the page is printed, and instead requires a light to be shone upon it.

The paper self-erases in just 16-24 hours approximately, slower when cold, but faster when warm.

The benefits derived out from this project are lesser paper consumption, elimination of the use of toner, and less power supply to perform the printout. Though the availability time of such paper is not estimated, it will take some time as Xerox works on its development.