As the piles of paper rise in workplaces, most businesses have given up on the promise of the "paperless office", to the extent that it is routinely referred to as a myth. But as organisations wake up to their impact on the environment, paper management is back in focus.Strategies include using less paper, selecting devices that use less energy to produce documents, and making a stronger commitment to recycling. Last week, however, document management specialist Seiko Epson unveiled a new device - and a new approach - to recycling. At the CeBIT technology fair in Hannover, Germany, it lifted the lid on the PaperLab, a recycling machine designed to fit in an office. The operator feeds used printer paper into the PaperLab, which shreds it, turns it into paper pulp, and transforms it back into paper, ready for the printer again. It is about the size of a minibus, and although the cost hasn't been revealed, it will probably run to several hundred thousand dollars. The size and cost may ...

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