Plastic printer and toner cartridges can be found in our home offices, classrooms, businesses, libraries and anywhere you might need to print documents, recipes, photos or coloring pages.
But did you know a single-toner cartridge can take 450 years to decompose in a landfill?
If you want to make your life more sustainable, you may be asking “Can we recycle plastic printer and toner cartridges and is this worth the effort, amid recycling issues we hear about today?”
The short expert answer is YES!
To get a little more insight on how printer and toner cartridges are recycled, as well as the best practices for recycling them, the Garden’s Green Resources Info Service asked for details from Office Essentials, a St. Louis-based company that is the Garden’s office product supplier.
Ken Cooksey, Office Essentials’ Toner Product Category Manager, encourages individuals, businesses and schools to recycle these cartridges, and to update purchasing choices to get the best quality and most sustainable options.
Printer and toner Cartridge Handling
According to Cooksey, most ink cartridge products include a return label, so anyone can easily send an empty cartridge back to the manufacturer for recycling.
“It’s true that individuals can bring some kinds of cartridges to the big-box office suppliers for recycling, but this is a labor-intensive service and many retail chains don’t actively promote it,” explains Cooksey.
“Office Essentials’ commercial customers, like the Garden, can get a return box and send back empty carts with our delivery driver,” added Cooksey. “We employ staff to efficiently ship these ’empties’ by the pallet-load to our supplier of remanufactured cartridges.”
Commercial customers should talk to their office product supplier to see if this kind of service is available.
Printer products that can be refilled, recycled, and remanufactured include laser printer cartridges, inkjet cartridges, photoconductors and imaging drums. Photocopier toner cartridges are generally tubes that can only be recycled, not refilled.
“Suppliers of these products are your best source for recycling,” says Cooksey.
Green Home Tip: When you change out a cartridge, stick the recycling label on the new cartridge box to ship off the empty cartridge. Make recycling one-and-done and skip the hassle of finding a box.
Sustainability Partnerships for Printer and Toner Cartridges
“HP (Hewlett Packard) is a sustainability leader,” Cooksey says. “When one brand takes this kind of lead, other brands tend to follow.”
Cooksey explains that this is an industry sector where circular, sustainable practices have become standard. Distribution companies like Office Essentials that choose to become HP Partners must document how their work meets HP’s sustainability standards.
“This includes keeping up with related industry developments,” says Cooksey. “For example, some customers are told that using compatible or remanufactured toners will void a printer’s warranty. This is inaccurate, which is why we’ve developed our ‘Right to Choose’ factsheet.”
Types of Printer-Supply Products
OEM Supplies
Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) supplies come from brands like HP, Brother, Cannon, Lexmark, etc. OEM supplies will have this brand-name labeling.
“These companies actively solicit toner cartridge returns for recycling, by providing return-shipping labels and recycling incentives,” Cooksey says.
HP Business Rewards program allows customers to earn points with each HP purchase and every returned cartridge, using the return shipping label in each new toner box.
Remanufactured supplies
Remanufactured supplies come from a company that cleans and refills an ink container to produce a new consumer product.
Cartridges that can’t be refilled are ground for recycling. A sustainability-focused remanufacturer will make the effort to process all materials they receive.
According to Cooksey, Clover is the largest North American remanufacturer and the remanufacturer his business uses.
“Sustainability-wise, I’d call them the HP of remanufacturing,” Cooksey says. “Clover does much more than simply refill empty OEM toners; they replace all internal parts with new parts.”
Clover’s website includes resources that are useful for partner firms like Office Essentials. A new Environmental Calculator gives customers data on the reduced impacts of using remanufactured ink and toner cartridges.
Equipment-Compatible cartridges
Equipment-Compatible cartridges may be the cheapest options, but Cooksey cautions that you get what you pay for.
“These products are typically foreign made, which adds global-transport environmental impacts and can add fair-labor concerns,” he explains. “Equipment-compatible cartridges copy the shape of OEM products so they fit into the brand-name equipment, but because the focus is on pricing, cartridges may leak or have lower per-cartridge yields, and image quality may be poor.”
OEM sources strongly prefer to reclaim their spent cartridges to reduce risk of these compatible product-copying.
Green Business Tip: Choose products with sustainable factors in mind, use mail-back or product supplier recycling options, and tap into manufacturer incentive programs.
Does Cartridge Recycling Work as a Fundraiser?
Cooksey says a decade ago cartridge recycling may have been a good fundraiser, but today shipping costs, a drop in the value of plastic, and the time and energy put into the fundraisers diminishes fundraising outcomes.
“For example, Office Essentials once donated up to $4,000 per quarter to charities from cartridge-recycling revenue,” Cooksey said. “Donations today trickle, maybe $200 per quarter, but we continue to donate.”
Green Schools Tip: Cartridge recycling programs geared toward schools and non-profits will specify a very limited range of items accepted, demanding time and attention for little financial return. For more effective student project ideas, check out Show-Me Green Schools – and consider joining the Green Schools Quest next school year!
Missouri Botanical Garden’s Green Resources Info Service is at your service! We answer questions about any aspect of sustainable living, anytime, at no charge. Reach us at 314-577-0246 or greenresources@mobot.org. Learn more about sustainability standards in this industry sector.
Jean Ponzi |Green Resources Specialist, EarthWays Center
Thanks to Ken Cooksey of Office Essentials for providing his expertise to this blog.
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