As more consumers demand that the products they buy — and the companies that produce them — become more sustainable, recycling has taken on a renewed importance. While recycling is certainly an important way to reduce the amount of waste sent to our overburdened landfills, it also offers both social and economic advantages. For example, recycling reduces the demand for raw resources to produce items such as ink and toner cartridges. This, in turn, scales down the damage or exploitation of communities and land often inherent in gathering these resources. And recycling can help grow jobs in both manufacturing and recycling industries, contributing to up to $36.6 billion in wages.
Despite its significant advantages, opportunities for recycling are often overlooked by many companies. In fact, only one third of all recyclable products are being recycled — often times because people don’t know which products can be recycled or they don’t understand how to get involved in the recycling process. To help you sort out the details, this article will outline why you should recycle your ink and toner cartridges and how to get started.
Recycling Your Ink and Toner Cartridges is Smart, Sustainable, and Easy
In the United States, more than 500 million printer cartridges are sold every year and of these, 350 million end up in landfills. That is an enormous amount of waste, much of which can be reused by responsible cartridge remanufacturing operations. Recycling ink and toner cartridges results in big benefits for our environment and for your business as you reduce your carbon footprint. For example:
Recycling Ink and Toner Cartridges Helps the Environment
The average ink or toner cartridge can take up to one thousand years to decompose, so any that end up in the landfill can be there, taking up space, for a very long time. During this time, they can leach toxic chemicals into our soil and groundwater, contributing to air, soil, and water pollution. Importantly, manufacturing brand new cartridges contributes to the depletion of scarce natural resources such as timber, minerals, oil, and petroleum and the consumption of greater energy resources as well, so reusing recycled cartridges in the remanufacturing process has the added benefit of conserving these resources.
Recycling Ink and Toner Cartridges Helps Businesses
Recycled ink and toner cartridges can be put to good use in the remanufacturing process. During this process, cartridges are inspected, cleaned, and repurposed as high-quality remanufactured ink and toner cartridges. Reuse is the pinnacle of environmental responsibility, so recycling your cartridges for reuse can help your business become more sustainable. As consumer demands on businesses to adopt more environmentally friendly strategies mount, an ink and toner recycling program can help your business stay relevant — and competitive.