I was visiting my mom’s apartment a few days ago and she wondered if I could change the HP 78 cartridge on her computer printer. Of course, I obliged. My mom is 82 and doesn’t have much aptitude with things mechanical . But to my dismay, she was just going to place the old inkjet cartridge into the trash can. ” Why don’t you let me recycle that,” I told her. “Oh I don’t bother with that,” was her reply.

What’s sad is that this typpe of feeling about this is typical of most people’s attitude. We live in a frantic, world.. Folks tend to do something as long as it is easy. If the garbage company provides a large bin to store your recycling in , that’s easy. If you have to haul it somewhere or mail it in somewhere, that’s not so easy. Recycling needs to be made easy for the consumer .

Now my companies always buy reconditioned Epson refurbished laser printer cartridges online.

At the current time, bubble jet computer printers and devices that use toner are a way of life. Almost every household with a computer has a printer, and most of those printers use some type of replaceable inkcartridge or toner cartridge. If everyone just throws those away, they go into our landfills and will stay there for a very long time , depositing dangerous chemicals into mother earth .

So is there an easy way to recycle ink or toner cartridges responsibly? The best way is to find a local non-profit that recycles them. These groups earn a little bit of money for every ink cartridge , so you help them out, while they return them to companies that refill them and then sell them on the secondary market as refurbished ink cartridges. This saves a lot of money and keeps the plastic in circulation and out of our environment .

If you normally buy brand-name inkjet cartridges like HP , Canon , IBM or Lexmark , be sure to do a little research before taking part in in their self-proclaimed recycling programs. Some investigators have discovered that many of the big inkjet and toner  cartridge makers simplify sending your used inkjet cartridges back to them, but they don’t actually recycle them. Instead they destroy them so that they won’t be refurbished . This helps them sell more OEM cartridges, and they make more money that way. That’s not very green – so just be sure to check it out first.

The cost savings between original and remanufactured inkjet cartridges is   enormous . My mother’s HP printer took the HP 78 color cartridge. I could have ordered a new OEM cartridge for $40 or so somewhere between $35 and $45 . Instead I got her a HP 78 remanufactured cartridge for under 25 dollars . I saved some cash , a local charity earned some money and I made an effort to save the earth. The company I work for uses a Xerox Workcentre printer that has solid ink that is very expensive. By buying a remanufactured brand, you can buy the xerox workcentre toner cartridges for close to 60%less per box. It saves $300 a year in printing costs alone .

It’s easy for you to do the same. You can get refurbished  printer cartridges for nearly every kind of printer. Be green. Buy generic toner and ink cartridges.