"Benefits of Recycled and Remanufactured Ink Cartridges"

By Darrel R.
Green Office Store.com's Associate Content Editor
September 1, 2007

Millions of empty toner and inkjet cartridges used in printers, fax machines, and copiers are discarded every year and end up in landfills or incinerators. Buying remanufactured toner and inkjet cartridges, and recycling empty cartridges, is an easy way for businesses to reduce the environmental impact of these discarded products and often save money at the same time.

Using Better Ink Cartridges

Any office equipment that uses a replaceable toner or inkjet cartridge can use remanufactured cartridges. Remanufactured toner and inkjet cartridges save resources by reusing components instead of disposing of them after one use. Remanufactured cartridges offer clear advantages over new cartridges in terms of cost and waste reduction. They are suitable for use in many printers, copiers and fax machines. The quality of remanufactured cartridges has improved dramatically since these products were first introduced in the 1990s. High-quality remanufactured cartridges now undergo a process that renders cartridges equivalent in performance, print quality and page yield to new models and that meet all original equipment manufacturer standards and specifications. Furthermore, using remanufactured cartridges will not void manufacturers' warranties on these products as was once believed.

Recycled Ink Cartridges

Recycling toner and inkjet cartridges is a process of collecting, sorting, cleansing, treating, or reconstituting for the manufacture of new products or the remanufacture of used cartridges. The typical used toner cartridge is composed of primarily plastic, metal and small portions of rubber, paper, foam and toner. The plastic alone takes at least one thousand years to decompose. However, approximately 97 per cent of these combined components can be recycled or reused.

Popular Brands of Remanufactured Ink Cartridges

Leading ink cartridge and toner cartridge manufacturers, such as Hewlett Packard, Lexmark, and Brother have instituted environmental programs. For example, the Hewlett Packard Planet Partners LaserJet supplies program, in operation since 1992, has helped customers recycle over 39 million HP LaserJet cartridges worldwide, which represents approximately 50,000 tons of material diverted from landfills. Lexmark, through its Cartridge Collection Programs, recovers millions of used cartridges to be either reused or recycled. They have various methods of return and sponsor unique collection partnerships around the world. Their program is designed to ensure that empty Lexmark print cartridges are properly recovered, reused or recycled; resulting in less solid waste and fewer resources consumed. And Brother International Corporation currently has a program in place to collect used Drum Units, Toner and Ribbon Cartridges, Ink Cartridges, and P-touch Tape Cassettes. They provide free prepaid shipping labels on their website for the return of these consumables.

As environmental awareness grows and consumers demand requires greater accountability from manufacturers, toner and cartridge recycling and the purchase of remanufactured cartridges have become common practices in offices throughout the world.