From 22 June onwards, the university will begin using the soy-based toner in its laser printers on campus.
Ohio State’s Soy Toner Alliance is led by UniPrint, which maintains about half of the estimated 7,000 printers on campus.
UniPrint will use the soy-based toner in any printer in its programme for which cartridges are available. This totals about 700 printers, with a page yield of 800,000 pages per minute.
The development of the toner, which is 35 percent or more bio-based, was funded by soybean checkoff dollars from the Ohio Soybean Council. The council also developed the toner with Battelle, a science and technology research team.
Soybean oil is a renewable resource that replaces the petroleum in the new toner. According to the developers, the toner is therefore easier to remove from paper during recycling than traditional toner, streamlining the recycling process.
Soy-based toner falls right in line with the spirit of Ohio’s new BioPreferred Purchasing programme, passed with strong bipartisan support in the Ohio legislature and signed by Govenor Ted Strickland in February.
The programme calls for state agencies, departments and state-supported colleges and universities to purchase bio-based alternatives as often as possible.