The Palo Alto Research Center funded by Xerox is developing a new type of paper that can be reused at least 100 times, as the special chemicals it is coated with make the ink fade away after 16 to 24 hours.

The paper has specially-coded molecules that react in contact with ultraviolet light emitted inside the printer, turning dark. Within 24 hours, the molecules fade back to their normal state and the paper can be printed again.

If the user doesn’t want to wait until the paper fades by itself, the paper can be run through the special printer that was designed for it. The printer will erase the old image before printing the new one.

Until now, Xerox has produced the special paper in white and in yellow, with a variety of ink colors that can be used on it.

It is estimated that 15 trillion pages of paper are printed everyday and Xerox predicts that the number will grow with 30 percent in the next ten years.

"I think it is extremely critical to continuously come up with innovative ideas and work with your partners to turn them into innovations that the customers of the world can benefit from. If you stand still, you become obsolete," Sophie Vandebroek, chief technology officer at Parc, told BBC News.

Parc, which is continually searching for innovative ideas, has picked several other projects it wants to develop, regarding solar power, environmentally friendly plastic, spiral cleaning, and a cell detection method that could be a life-savior, BBC informs on its website.

"Our mission is to deliver innovations that solve the problems our customers face today while creating visionary technologies for tomorrow and beyond," Vandebroek said.