The inkjet – created by students – won an award in Kuching, Malaysia.
The students with their renewable ink (Credit: Zulazhar Sheblee/The Star)
The Star reported on the inkjet, created by students from the Petrochemical Engineering Department at the Polytechnic Kuching, and which is “made out of used cooking oil”. The inkjet won the 2016 ‘Creating New Out of Old’ award, “edging 14 other groups in the higher education institutions category”, with the students winning RM700 ($166/€151).
The inkjet uses pigments to create the different colours, including “turmeric for the yellow colour, Rosella flower (red) and Asian pigeon wing flower (blue)”, with each of these “mixed with recycled waste cooking oil that is used for the base”. The team noted that “everything we use to produce this ink is natural, sustainable and environmentally-friendly”, with production costs “very low” and the ink able to be sold “at about 70 percent lower than the market price for normal printer inkjet”.
The team collected cooking oil “from the polytechnic’s cafeteria”, and is currently selling the inkjet for RM20 ($4.76/€4.32) per 50ml bottle to fellow students. The awards event was organised by Malaysia’s Department of Environment (DOE), and “challenged students to design innovative products made out of recyclable materials”, with over 100 students from 20 groups “representing various primary and secondary schools around the city”.
Azuri Azizah Saedon, State Director for the DOE, commented that the competition “was organised to inculcate a deep sense of responsibility and awareness among youths on the importance of taking care of the environment through recycling”, adding that “I hope they will practise what they learned during this competition in their daily lives and share it with their friends and family”.