Innovation of the week: A paper-recycling plant for your office

We might be living in the digital age, but the average American still uses "the equivalent of nearly six 40-foot trees' worth of paper each year," said Mike Murphy at Quartz. Epson's new Paper Lab — essentially an on-site recycling plant for your office — could save some of those trees from getting the chop. The hefty machine breaks down used paper and presses it into fresh, new sheets, producing up to 6,720 letter-size sheets in an eight-hour workday.

By shrinking the supply chain and removing the need for so much paper to be delivered to offices, the device could help businesses cut their carbon footprint. Epson believes its new device is also the first paper-recycling system that doesn't require water — it usually takes 3 gallons of water to make a single sheet of paper. Paper Lab will go on sale in 2016; Epson has yet to announce the price.

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