January 30, 2008 10:47 AM PST

GreenPrint offers free paper-saving software

Posted by Elsa Wenzel

How green are your printing habits?

(Credit: GreenPrint)

A free flavor of GreenPrint software that enables people to waste less paper when printing became available Monday.

The new application, GreenPrint World, detects and highlights unwanted content, such as banner ads on a Web page, that tends to spill over onto extra pages. It also lets users delete images from the printed page and quickly create print-friendly PDF documents. The GreenPrint interface appears when users print from any program.

The software displays the amount of paper, money, and greenhouse gases users could be saving. GreenPrint estimates that regular usage may save up to $90 each year, the equivalent of more than 1,400 pages. GreenPrint aspires for widespread adoption of its product to spare 100 million trees from being chopped down and 300 million tons of greenhouse gases from polluting the atmosphere.

Only the paid Home Premium and Enterprise versions of GreenPrint offer faster-loading, ad-free print previews as well as tech support via e-mail and telephone. At this point the app is only available for Windows computers.

GreenPrint also sells the first "green" font, called EverGreen, for $10. It's supposed to take up one-fifth less white space than Arial, Helvetica, or Times New Roman. The company aims to design more fonts.

In November, GreenPrint partnered with Xerox 8560 and 8860 business laser printers. Xerox claims that its solid ink printers create 90 percent less waste than rival laser printers.

Canon, meanwhile, is aiming to outdo competitors by tacking a green label on the packages of its new printers.