Today, it’s hard to find an organization where printers are not used. These help in taking printouts and making business communication convenient. Apart from offices, a high number of printers are also used in homes to take images, children’s assignments, grocery lists, etc. printout. Therefore, with the increasing use of printers, the printer cartridges consumption also boosted. Ultimately, the flow of waste or used printer ink and toner cartridges get enhanced. But, the biggest question arises on how to utilize the waste printer cartridges to save the earth from 365 million ink cartridges landfilling. Here we have some unique suggestions for you. Before this, let’s know how to dispose of ink and toner cartridges properly.
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Ways to Dispose of Used Printer Cartridges
There are 5 ways for printer cartridge disposal correctly:
● Look for the company in your area that deals with an empty printer cartridge. These companies have direct contact with manufacturers and cartridge suppliers. After getting cartridge from customers they resell the companies and generate profit. Many of such small companies work for NGOs and help them to generate funds. Disposing and selling of cartridge to hem, also help you to work for some noble cause. Look for a company, like Concept, in your area that deals specifically with IT recycling. Companies like this believe in the 3’Rs; Reduce, Recycle and Reuse. These companies have direct contact with manufacturers and cartridge suppliers. After getting cartridges from customers they resell them and generate profit. Many such small companies work for NGOs and help them to generate funds. Disposing of and selling cartridges to them will also help you to work for some noble cause.
● If you wish, you can directly keep in touch with the toner cartridge manufacturer. Brands like bother, canon and hp printer cartridges have their own recycling plans. They motivate the users to back their ink or toner cartridge and in return offer them good deals on the next buying.
● It is best to dispose of the toner cartridge in an appropriate bin or container. Like green, bin is used for recycled trash. Therefore, whether you are disposing of cartridge in the office or at home, always put it into a green bin. So, that they can be shipped properly and can be reused or recycled.
● There are many online stores that look for customers who want to offer them their used ink cartridges. For this, they offer toll-free numbers and free pick up facility. If there is no return policy in your area, you can take assistance from your nearby office supply store. Ask them, whether they have a recycling program or not. If yes, just put all your cartridge in a box and give it to store staff for the recycling process.
● You can also log on to your printer manufacturer website and check their recycling program. For example, HP has a recycling program for ink cartridges that allow the users to return previous HP cartridge and take benefit on the next cartridge buying. Disposing of via such offers are really a great deal for printer users.
Best ways to recycle ink and toner cartridges
We all know the scary effect of cartridges land-filling on the environment. But, as the saying where there is darkness, there is light. Some superheroes found unique ways to reuse waste printer cartridges and create a new lasting product. Let’s know how they use recycled printer cartridges.
● Bike path created from recycled cartridge
The West MacDonnell National Park in Australia is the only place in the world that attracts more than 120,000 visitors every year across the world to view the bike path. This path is made from plastic waste such as toner and ink cartridges waste plastic. How did they do? They approach one of the leading plastic recycling companies and turn all waste plastic into a bike path of 17km. This path was only created at a cost of only $130,000. The best part is that it demands low maintenance, has resistance to moisture, cracking or splitting and gives lasting results. Compared to other roads, it is much easier to install a path from waste plastic.
● Plastic roads and carparks
Plastic roads are amazing achievements innovated by MacRebur company. Today, around the world there are approx 40 million km of roads are created from plastic waste such as cartridge’s plastic. The brighter side of these roads is that authorities need not worry for the next 15 years once a road installed, or there is something major accident happens.
Normally, to construct roads 90% of material is used in the form of sand and limestone and only 10% bitumen is used to bind roads. It is a sticky black substance extracted from crude oil. During construction, bitumen is kept at high temperature and in a liquid state. To use bitumen in road installation is expensive and harmful to the environment.
To deal with this problem, Scottish start-up MacRebur for the replacement of bitumen. They use plastic including waste plastic from cartridges to solve two world’s problems like potholes on roads and ill effects of landfilling. They turned the waste material into small plastic pellets that help to bind asphalt materials.
Nearly 700,000 bottles can be utilized to construct a 1km road, which is cheaper compared to normal road construction costs. Lasting effects save your many bucks for repairing and maintaining.
● E-wood Furniture
E-wood is a new form of using plastic and turning them in durable materials like furniture. An Australian based company, named Concept provides IT recycling coupled with secure data and equipment destruction services for all business sectors. recycled old and used ink cartridge to construct plastic furniture, wall fencing and many more. As the extreme weather conditions do not affect the durability of e-wood. Therefore, people in many areas choose to e-wood for garden benches and raised garden beds. In any season or condition, its products can last for decades.
● Lousy Ink
Lousy links are created from waste printer inks. Normally, people throw the ink cartridge when the printer starts giving warnings for low ink level or printer deny printing. But there is ink left in the ink cartridge. Lousy is a brand that collects all leftover ink and put them into bottles. These bottles are used for artistic purposes as a fine line pen. Lousy collect all ink in containers before the cartridge is going to be crushed. At the time of start-up, they collected 850,000-liter ink. Hence, it’s a great contribution by Lousy to save ink and planet.
