Throwing away empty ink cartridges?
Just like empty batteries and empty drink containers you do not throw away your printer’s empty ink cartridges.
Yearly, 212 million ink cartridges get thrown away in Western Europe alone. 250 million ink cartridges are sold in Western Europe each year. Only 38 million of these ink cartridges get remanufactured, or reused, when they are empty. This is a mere 15%! The remaining 212 million are landfilled or incinerated. This is enough to fill 2 football stadium each year and has a weight of 53 Boeing 747 airplanes. THIS MUST BE STOPPED! Empty ink cartridges should be remanufactured. You are already accustomed to handing in your empty batteries and drink containers. RecycleClub strives to make handing in empty ink cartridges just as normal.
An empty ink cartridge is no waste, it is the most important part of the remanufacturing process. The 3 most important reasons for not throwing away your printer’s empty ink cartridges, but handing them in via RecycleClub:
- Extraction of raw materials for the production of new ink cartridges costs more energy than reusing empty ink cartridges. By handing in ink cartridges you reduce the need for this amount of energy and raw materials.
- Your emtpy ink cartridge can be remanufactured 2 or 3 times, often times without the need for recycling. You contribute to a circular economy! To shortly explain: when a cartridges gets recycled it is shredded and used in the production process as raw material. When remanufacturing the cartridge you use the product in its original state, naturally after careful inspection and cleaning.
- Just like handing in empty drink containers you can receive a reimbursement for handing in empty ink cartridges. This reimbursement can be paid out to you or can be donated to charity. We think handing in this important material for the remanufacturing process should be rewarded fairly. Therefore, handing in your empty ink cartridges does not costs you anything. Moreover, each cartridge in the list represents a monetary value. You are always free to choose what you want to do with this reimbursement. You can choose to donate the money to the 4 supported charities or to pay out the money to your own bank account.
