Black-and-white printing goes green with soy toner

SPARTA, Wis. -- Every time you print out a page on a laser printer you're using toner made from petroleum-based products. Now there's a greener choice that shows promise: a toner product derived from soybean oil.

While some customers might be wary, potential benefits are clear. It's easier to recycle paper printed with soy. And perhaps more important in a sour economy, soy toners can cost less than the standard alternative. Soybeans are a renewable resource whose price is likely to be more stable than that of oil.

Newspaper, magazine and book publishers have shifted to soy-based ink in recent years.

Early results suggest soy toners work as advertised. In a recent test involving identical documents from two identical printers — one with a new Hewlett-Packard cartridge and the other a soy cartridge — the printouts were indistinguishable, equally dark and smudge-proof.

The soy cartridge was supplied by PRC Technologies, a division of Print Recovery Concepts in Standish, Maine. Rick Greenlaw, the company's vice president of marketing, said its goal was to make sure soy toners were cheaper than traditional ones.

"Our interest is in the person willing to go green as long as doesn't it cost them more. Period," he said.

One of SoyPrint's biggest distributors is LaserMonksGreen, a website operated by Cistercian monks of Our Lady of Spring Bank in Sparta, Wis. The group says it makes enough money to run the abbey and donates the rest to charity. For every cartridge of soy toner it sells, LaserMonksGreen has a tree planted in Brazil and donates $1 to a world hunger organization. The monks also pray for customers.

LaserMonksGreen sells soy toner in cartridges that fit into an HP printer just like the originals. The soy versions can cost about 20% less than new HP cartridges, although remanufactured cartridges that have been refilled with traditional toner can be even less expensive than SoyPrint.

For example, OfficeDepot.com sells a Q5942X cartridge for HP printers for $249. A SoyPrint alternative is $181. A remanufactured version with regular toner is $120.