Double-sided documents, using recycled paper – both are great ways to make printing more eco-friendly, but neither is a solution to the millions of leaky ink cartridges piling up in landfills each year.

Using Swiss cheese as its inspiration, a Dutch communications agency has invented a font designed to cut down substantially on ink consumption.
The new Ecofont, downloadable for free at the company’s website, [1] appears at small sizes like any other type, but each letter is actually filled with tiny, inkless circles:

The design minimizes ink usage by up to 20 percent, the company claims. But even with a more ink-efficient font, the cartridge will eventually run out. When it does, websites like www.freerecycling.com [2] make it easy – and economical – to keep your used plastic out of the dump.