Throwing away printer cartridges affects the environment

Printer cartridges are considered as one of the world's fastest growing consumable items today. Most of the cartridges used in the printers are thrown away with less than half of the ink being used.

The industries related to the printers and their supplies are failing in supporting the environmental goals planned by the OEMs (Original Printer Manufacturers).

The companies are now focusing more on making new cartridges and breaking the used ones to avoid re-filling of these cartridges as it affects the profit of the company. According to the reports based on recycling in the US and Europe, it is known that the companies related to the printer manufacturing and cartridge refilling are competing each other in collecting the used cartridges.

The OEMs are trying to recycle these cartridges by initially breaking them into their component particles and making them again and refilling and reselling them at perhaps lower prices. Based on the environmental needs, it is better to refill the cartridges and reuse them. But their working in the printers is not up to the mark. This leads to throwing away of the cartridges and then broken down into their component particles for recycling. But there are problems faced during collection of the empty or half used cartridges as sending the cartridges to the re-manufacturers becomes a costly issue. Due to the re-cycling of the old cartridges by the re-manufacturing companies, the other small local companies are able to reduce the overall demand for the new cartridges by about 20 percent. Also the Xerox manufacturers are now slowly realizing that reusing the cartridges is better than the recycling. Reusing the cartridges is also a bit difficult as there are different sizes and types of the cartridges available this could have been easier if there were certain standard sizes and types of cartridges. Hence the manufacturers prefer using the cartridges which are being reused the first time. After each use cycle of the cartridges, their likelihood of being used decreases.

The printer manufacturing companies sell the printers and then gain the company's profit by selling brand new, unused cartridges. The best thing that can be done at this point, is that the big companies manufacturing the printers and the cartridges should come together and design cartridges with different structure so that can be easily reused instead of recycling the cartridges. If this is done, then it can also help all the companies to fulfill their aims set by the OEMs to save the environment from land pollution generally caused by them.