With almost every house, every office and every business having at least one or more printers what happens to all of those wasted cartridges? The good news is that now days there are enough recycling stations around suburbia that getting rid of them is no longer an issue.
Where to start with Recycling
What are we going to do with all of those old printer ink cartridges we have laying around the office or home? That is the question that customers often ask us and we feel that it is great that most would rather recycle their old cartridges rather than just bin them.
So in this article we are going to take a look at some statistics about printer cartridges and also some places that you can take your used toners or ink cartridges to be recycled. While I don't profess to be a greenie I do believe that it makes sense to recycle what products can be recycled as the benefits are not only environmental but also economical as well. Let's face it how difficult is it to take your empty cartridges every now and then to a recycle depot to be used for ink refills instead of just binning them.
The statistics on cartridge recycling
- 60 - 80% of all printer cartridges go straight in the bin and end up as landfill.
- 350,000,000 printer cartridges Worldwide end up in landfill annually.
- The USA is responsible for 120,000,000 cartridges dumped each year.
- The UK is responsible for 55,000,000 cartridges dumped each year.
- These figures rise by 12% every year.
- 8 printer cartridges are thrown away every second Worldwide and end up in landfill.
What would be the benefits of recycling our cartridges
The following amounts of materials could be recovered if only 500,000 cartridges were to be recycled.
- 48,000 Kilograms of Aluminium
- 200 tons of plastic
- 5,000,000 titres of oil.
- a saving of 2,400,000 Kilograms of CO2 emissions
How waste recycling helps our planet
Recycling of printer cartridges and computer equipment is becoming one of the biggest issues in regards to landfill. We can all help to reduce the amount of landfill by taking our used cartridges to your nearest recycle depot. See recycling video
Where to take your cartridges for recycling
- Checkout the Recycling Near You website for your nearest recycling depot.
- Checkout the Printer Cartridge Recycling at Officeworks.
- Checkout the Close the Loop website dedicated to printer cartridge recycling.
What can I do to help?
There are a number of things that we can all do to help slow down the amount of landfill that is directly accredited to dumped printer cartridges. In my opinion the number one solution would be to switch to either re manufactured toners and inkjet cartridges or else use a generic cartridge that has been produced from recycled waste products.
There are several reasons for this. One is that a re manufactured cartridge means that every time they are used you are cutting the landfill from cartridges by 50% immediately. In other words the same cartridge is being used twice rather than just the one time and then getting dumped. A non genuine cartridge also is not in a hi-tech, overdone packaging with Gold bands and extra bits of fancy cardboard. This also reduces the amount of waste that often ends up at your local tip.
So next time you go to throw your old printer cartridge in the bin remember that the main body of the cartridge can take up to 1,000 years to decompose so take it to your local recycle depot and help to reduce our planet's landfill.