What to do with used ink cartridges instead of just throwing them in the bin

martian_aphid · 1 Oct 2012 at 14:48

Hey guys, I'd love some advice on the above topic.

I work in a small business which has several inkjet printers and we get through a decent amount of ink each month and obviously that means empty cartridges.

I've had a search online and there are charities, etc. that will give you a box and collect it but it seems they don't want our type of cartridges - Canon PGI-5s and CLI-8s - does anyone have these cartridges and do you do anything useful with them rather than dumping them into landfill? Others seem to only want to deal with small domestic scale i.e. they will send you a envelope for 1 or 2 empty cartridges!

I'd appreciate any other suggestions for what we could do with all these types of cartridges? We already recycle most of our other office waste and we would like to add these to that list.

Thanks in advance for any help or advice.

G|mp · 1 Oct 2012 at 14:52

Contact your stationery provider, they normally provide bins for your cartridges and then they take them away to be recycled.

I've just done exactly that for 16 sites around the country and that was all done through our stationery people

Aod · 1 Oct 2012 at 14:57

Buy Laser printers

Reduced our printing costs at work by about 95%

Cosimo · 1 Oct 2012 at 15:09

http://www.tesco.com/greenerliving/greener_tesco/ink_cartridge_recycling.page

martian_aphid · 1 Oct 2012 at 16:03

@ G|mp, thanks for that info, I hadn't considered that option but I'll make some enquiries.

@Aod, I think we will be switching some machines to laser at some point, as you say the running costs will be a lot less. However, we won't be abandoning inkjet entirely as some of our projects require the print finish they produce.

@ simulatorman, thanks for that link, I actually came across that one but from what I could see they were dealing with cartridges being mailed off one-by-one - I could stick about 25-30 in there atm!