It appears that not only is coffee good to the last drop, but the dregs are now good for printing a document. Yes, someone has actually invented a printer that uses old coffee grounds as ink, and to make it even more interesting, the printer does not even require electricity.

This coffee and manually powered printer was not entirely the product of pure inspiration, but it is an entry in the Greener Gadgets competition. The RITI printer is designed by Joen Hwan Ju, and it has generated a lot of buzz on the gadget blogosphere. In fact, I’m surprised that someone on this blog hasn’t covered this already.

In case you haven’t heard how the RITI printer works, you have to place the remnants of your wet and dirty coffee filter inside an ink cartridge with some water. Then you manually move the cartridge back and forth and it will mark up the paper. The cartridge can be easily emptied by throwing the twice-used grounds into a compost bin.

I can’t imagine that the manual operation of the printer would be a fast process. In all honesty, a late-eighties dot matrix printer would probably do a speedier job. However, your documents wouldn’t smell as mountain-fresh afterward.

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