How to Recycle Toner or Ink Cartridges and the amazing Impact this has on the Environment

Printer toner was first released to the general public in 1969. In the decades since, interest in them has only grown. Today, everyone from small businesses to the largest of corporations uses toner cartridges rather quickly. In the United States alone, more than 70 million ink and toner cartridges are sold every year. Factoring that number across Canada and then, internationally, there’s a tremendous amount of waste being generated in this category.

So many small businesses get their ink and toner supplies from a registered vendor. These vendors don’t necessarily have a return program. As we seek to reduce the waste our business is making and to help others do the same, we’re advocating for a business-friendly ink and toner cartridge recycling program. Consider how easy it would be to simply put the empties in a box, sealing it and sending it off to have those cartridges recycled. Fortunately, some cartridge manufacturers have already started doing this, going so far as to completely cover the return costs.

Irrelevant of what recycling program your ink and toner cartridges are inputted in, the important part is getting these out of our landfills. We may not often think about landfills but the truth is that they offer us a finite space to input our waste in. Every day, we get closer to completely filling our existing inventory of landfills and at that point, we will have to build new ones. For this reason, limiting waste is key. There’s so much opportunity to recycle ink and toner cartridges that we think this is a strong area to focus on. The small business community wants to minimize their waste and recycle as much as they can so let’s give them the opportunity to do so.

Create a new toner or ink cartridge by filling an empty one. If this can’t be done, there’s still opportunity to use the specific components of a cartridge — such as its toner, metal, and plastic — repurposed in a wide variety of different consumer and industrial products. In fact, there are already companies recycling these components into pens, asphalt, park benches, and more.

Approximately 70 percent of the world’s ink or toner cartridge waste comes from the United States. More than 500 million toner cartridges end up in landfills every year. The amount of time it takes for one of these to biodegrade is anywhere from 450 to 1,000 years. The approximate two pounds of plastic and metal found in each cartridge should be recycled, plain and simple. Doing so can create a massive positive impact on landfills.

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