Recycling Ink and Toner Cartridges

What do you do with your empty ink and toner cartridges?

Tossing them into the trash seems like the easiest way to dispose of the unnecessary cartridges, in fact, 60 - 80 percent of empty ink and toner cartridges used in laser printers, fax machines, and copiers end up in our landfills. In North America alone, 300 million cartridges end up in landfills each year!

Out of the 300 million cartridges thrown away we could circle the earth over 3 times. Not to mention that inkjet cartridges discarded in landfills leak into our soil, waterways and hard wild life. Especially carbon black toner, it has been classified as carcinogenic by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.

It's very easy to recycle your empty cartridges; whenever you need to go to your local office supply store just remember to take your empty cartridges, some stores have recycling bins at the front of the store if you're in a hurry and just need to drop them off. Dolphin Blue also offers an Inkjet & Toner Cartridge Recycling Program; we have free pre-paid shipping labels accepting all brands of empty printer cartridges, used cell phones and printer fusers.

So what's the importance of recycling your cartridge?

Well you might not see the importance directly but the change will be there. A laser cartridge can take up to 450 years to decompose while others can take up to 1,000 years, that's crazy! By recycling just one of your empty ink cartridges you'll keep about 2 pounds of waste out of landfills.

Recycling cartridges helps us conserve our natural resources such as timber, water, oil/petroleum and minerals since we reduce the need to use raw materials. More than 3 quarts of oil is consumed to produce each new laser cartridge and for manufacturing a new inkjet cartridge, roughly about 3 ounces of oil is used. We can save an estimated of over 11 million gallons of oil by recycling our cartridges.

You'll also help save energy and decrease greenhouse gases emissions that contribute to climate change.

Remember we can all help sustain our environment, not just for our own well being but for our kids and future generations to come.