In its official press release, Epson doesn't give away too much detail about what goes on inside the PaperLab, but says the machine is the first to utilize a dry process to recycle and produce paper. (A small amount of water is needed "to maintain a certain level of humidity inside the system," but it doesn't seem to be as liquid a method as traditional pulping.) The company says there are three main steps to the procedure: fiberizing, which transforms the waste paper into "long, thin cottony fibers"; binding, where substances are added to change the paper's properties, like color or "flame resistance"; and forming, where the fiber is pressed into new sheets of paper