Why Recycle Your Printer Cartridges?

Why? Well, there are a multitude of environmental reasons why you should...

Simply throwing away used ink and printer cartridges adds unnecessary toxins and pollutants into the environment. Every year, there are millions and millions of ink cartridges thrown away in the UK. You'd be surprised, but it has been estimated that over 45 million used or empty printer cartridges are thrown away across the British Isles every year. 

The majority of these ink cartridges end up being thrown into landfill sites, where they can take up to a shocking 1,000 years to fully decompose! Put into context, these 45 million discarded ink cartridges could cover the entire Wembley football pitch over 15 times! 

In addition, the process of producing and manufacturing just one brand new ink cartridge can waste up to 8kg of CO2 and nearly 1lb of oil!

Unfortunately, this isn't just restricted to here in the UK. Every year, people across the world throw away over 375 million empty ink cartridges. To help put this into perspective, this translates to around 1 million cartridges per day and 11 per second. When placed end-to-end, these discarded printer cartridges would circle the earth over three times!

All this can be saved by recycling and reusing printer cartridges

Recycled ink cartridges are professionally tested and cleaned before being refilled with ink and then resold. They produce the same high quality prints, meaning they are just as good as original new ones. The only difference being that they're cheaper, as the manufacturer will have reused a cartridge rather than having to produce an entirely new one.

By recycling your printer cartridges, you will be ensuring that our natural resources and energy last longer. In fact, up to 97% of materials used during the manufacture of ink and printer cartridges can be reused and recycled. Empty and unused printer cartridges can also provide valuable plastic material for reuse and reduce your carbon footprint in the process. 

So, help do your bit for the environment and earn yourself some extra cash in the process; recycle your empty ink cartridges today.