If your office is like most, when an empty ink or toner cartridge is pulled from your printer, it ends up in the trash without a second thought. Recently, however, it’s become more commonplace for businesses to ride the green wave of environmental stewardship and take strides to reduce their ecological footprint. These efforts include recycling used print cartridges rather than disposing of them along with other waste.
Why recycle print cartridges?
In the simplest of terms, recycling your used ink cartridges is far better for the environment than sending them to landfills. Besides the obvious—minimizing landfill waste—recycling cartridges is a more eco-friendly option for a number of reasons, including:
• saving energy used to produce new ones
• minimizing contributions to greenhouse gas emissions
• reducing the extraction of non-renewable resources
• decreasing your contributions to air and water pollution
• minimizing the amount of raw materials used to produce other products
How do we recycle used cartridges?
So, now that you see the value in recycling ink cartridges, you’re on board with recycling them. But how do you go about doing so? There are a number of different options for recycling.
Some ink and toner cartridge manufacturers have their own recycling programs that allow you to ship or drop off used cartridges free of charge. Check your manufacturer’s website to learn whether they offer a program and if so, how to take part in it. There are also charitable organizations that accept used ink and toner cartridges. Cartridges for Kids and Recycle4Charity are two such programs; they even provide prepaid shipping labels and rebates for the items you send in for recycling. Finally, you can drop off empty cartridges at a local recycling facility. Sites such as Earth911.com enable you to search for facilities near you by zip code.
With little effort you can keep your empty ink and toner cartridges out of landfills and take a step towards a greener office. Contact us today to learn more about how to recycle your used printer cartridges in order to dispose of them in a much more eco-friendly manner.