Several Ways to Recycle Your Ink Cartridges

Have you asked yourself, “Why should I recycle ink cartridges?”

Everyday we are being made aware of ways and reasons to conserve and recycle. Many parts of the country even require we put our recycling with our normal garbage pickup. But why recycle these small cartridges?

First, it keeps them away from landfills. Even though cartridges are relatively small, 400 million ink cartridges are purchased each year in the United States. (this number is only going to increase!). Yes, less than a quarter of these cartridges are recycled. Leaving a whopping 300 million cartridges that end up in our garbage. By the way, that is about 60 million pounds worth of garbage!

So now you can ask yourself, “How can I recycle ink cartridges?”

More and more companies are even making it easier for you to recycle your old cartridges. Most manufactures like Hewlett-Packard, Canon, Dell offers all programs and recycling cartridges. Their programs are very simple, you do not even need to pay the postage to send them the cartridges. You receive a pre-paid package. Super simple!

Many larger office supply chains will give you coupons or cash back for cartridges you bring to them.

There are several community and school groups that will also collect discarded cartridges. These programs donate a certain amount per cartridge they receive to the group sponsoring the collection drive. This is a great way to give a little back to your community, while doing your part globally for our environment.

Whichever road you choose, it is now easy and painless to recycle their ink cartridges and not only keep them out of landfills, but also get discounts or donate to a worthy charity.