By Evan Ackerman
You know what the biggest waste of paper is? That’s right: paper. Xerox knows a thing or to about paper, and they’ve come up with self-erasing paper that can be used over and over again. Not erasable, but self-erasing, leaving you with an entirely blank sheet of paper after 24 hours that you can reuse up to 100 times. Here’s how it works:
“The paper contains specially coded molecules that create a print after being exposed to ultraviolet light emitted from a thin bar in a printer. The molecule readjusts itself within 24 hours to its original form to delete the print, or heat can readjust the molecule instantly.”
Obviously, one of the nice things about paper is that in general when you write something down it means you have a permanent, physical copy of something. But for memos about TPS report formatting and such, it’s better for everyone when they just disappear.