I started saving my old inkjet cartridges a few months ago for my church youth group as they were collecting them to make some money (by recycling them). I put a grocery bag on my door and everytime I replaced the ink cartridges , I place the used ink cartridge into the bag.

After they told us  we were supposed to hand in the inkjet cartridges we had saved, I retrieved my bag of cartridges. I was surprised by the number of cartridges I had used . I checked ou the contents and found I had 3 HP 78 color ink cartridges and 9 HP black ink cartridges. This was what I had used in only two months. Since I have a home office, I do business out of my home, so I probably use more printer ink than most households , but it got me thinking about how much inkjet ink must be used just throughout the world . I hated to think that I had previously just tossed those used inkjet cartridges into the waste basket, since I thought it would take too much time to do anything else. Now we always buy recycled HP compatible inkjet ink from online stores.

At the current time, ink based printers and devices that use toner are a what’s available . Just about every house in the U.S. has has a printer , and the most widely used ones use some sort of recyclable inkjet cartridge or toner cartridge. If you trhow those away, they go into our landfills and will stay there for a very long time , eventually leaching carcinogenic substances into the water supply .

So what’s the best way to recycle ink or toner cartridges responsibly? The simplest way is to find a local charity that collects them. Suchorganizations earn a small amount for every cartridge they collect , so you give them a small donation , while they return them to recycling centers that have the ability to recycle and refill them and then resell them as refurbished ink jet cartridges. This saves the consumer a lot of money and keeps the plastic in circulation and out of our dumps .

A couple of things to remember . Many of the brand name ink cartridge makers offer something that appears to be a recycling program, but make certain you find out what happens to the used cartridges before you use this service . Many of the name brand print cartridge makers like Canon and Kodak destroy the cartridges. They do this to keep them from being resold so that you have to buy their original cartridges . So know what happens to the cartridges first.

Eliminating pollution isn’t the only benefit that occurs by recycling used up inkjet cartridges. You also save plenty of money. Most toner cartridges run around 35 dollars each if you buy them at office supply stores . Refurbished printer cartridges can save you a whopping 50%. Those kinds of savings can really add up for small and large businesses. My business uses  Xerox 740L laser toner cartridges   that prints really nice printed copies. Unfortunatley the ink is so expensive. But we save more than $40 per month buying the refurbished cartridges.The neat thing is that you can also prevent the polluting of our landfills and even help out a local charity (if you donate your cartridges to a local cause for recycling) while being frugal That’s a positive solution any way you slice it.

Those who have at least one all in one printer or those in a position of budgeting for printing toner and ink supplies as their job should investigate recycling their toner cartridges. If everyone participates, it can go a long way in cleaning up our environment. At the same time you will be increasing revenue. It require a bit more of your time, but it is worth it.

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