We're located in the Cannery
Phone 250-770-2950
Toll Free 1-800-217-3211
Fax 250-770-2944
1475 Fairview Road, #102
Penticton, BC
V2A 7W5
Monday — Friday 8:00am to 5:00pm
Is that cartridge
REALLY empty?
We often have people thinking they need to replace a cartridge when it isn't really empty. Why? Because the printer or its software told them it was! Many of these so-called "empty" cartridges - both ink and laser toner - had as much as 20% left.
If your printer tells you the cartridge is empty, wait until the print on a page begins to look faint before replacing the cartridge. It won't hurt your printer and it will save you a lot of money in needlessly replaced cartridges!
Save the Environment AND Save Money!
As of 2011 — that's 10 years in business — together with our customers we have kept over 100,000 cartridges out of local landfills.
Help us hit 200,000!
Initially, we became aware of environmentally-friendly practices for small business initially through our own business.
As we provided, supplied and serviced our customers' office equipment — inkjet and laser printers, copiers and fax machines — we realized that there was a considerable amount of needless waste involved. Literally thousands of perfectly recyclable cartridges, for example, were simply thrown out because no one offered a simple way to recycle and reuse them.
It's estimated that 375 MILLION used ink and toner cartridges end up in U.S. landfills every year. That's only in the U.S.! We can find stats for Canada, but you can bet that it's comparable.
Because we are in the business of refilling and reusing ink and toner cartridges, we realized what an utter waste this is. There is absolutely no reason to just discard a used printer cartridge. They are 100% recyclable and can either be refilled or at least renovated for reuse.
And there is no reason you can't have as good performance or better from a refilled or remanufactured printer cartridge.
A single ink cartridge consumes about a gallon of oil to produce.
Each year in North America, more than 40,000 metric tons of plastic and metal is saved as a result of cartridge recycling.
For every 100,000 used cartridges recycled, we can save:
9599 kilograms of aluminum
40 tons of plastic
1,000,000 liters of oil
Printer cartridge recycling has virtually become synonymous with successful sustainable development.
That's only for printer cartridges. Think what we can do if we apply the same principles to everything we do in our small businesses!
BC Hydro has a great guide to greening your office
From the US Environmental Protection Agency's WasteWise program information:
By using remanufactured toner cartridges in printers and switching to a toner system for the fax machine, Applied Specialties, Inc. in Ohio saved $600 and eliminated 260 pounds of waste. E-mail and double-sided copies also saved the company $320 and decreased paper waste by 500 pounds.
Many programs have been implemented in the United States and Europe to encourage the recycling of ink cartridges. New York has a recycling law for businesses and consumers regarding toner and ink cartridges. In California the Public Contract Code (PCC) section 12156 encourages businesses to purchase recycled ink and toner cartridges.
The list below outlines a few facts about toner/ink cartridges and the impact they have on the environment.
Green House Gases emissions from manufacturing a single mono toner cartridge have been calculated to approximately 4.8 kg CO2; per cartridge. This is for the cartridge only and excludes the toner inside. The Life Cycle Assessment of toner reveals that the GHG emissions are approximately 16 metric tons per 1 metric ton toner produced. On average a cartridge with a yield of 5000 pages contains 200 grams toner. This equals 3.2 kg CO2 emission per cartridge.
- Each year over 350 million cartridges are thrown out to landfills.
- By 2012 500 million laser cartridges and 1.8 billion ink cartridges will be dumped in landfills.
- Each cartridge becomes 3.5 pounds of solid waste.
Almost all inkjet cartridges can either be refilled or remanufactured. Refilling your own ink cartridge can help to reduce your running costs, it also helps the environment by reducing the number of cartridges that go to landfill. Every year millions of empty printer cartridges are needlessly thrown away often going to UK landfill sites near you! Here are a few good reasons why it is so important to “refill and re-use” rather than disposing of your cartridge to landfill.
1 Over 45 million cartridges go into UK landfill sites each year*.
2 That’s enough to cover Old Trafford football pitch 17 times or build a second Blackpool Tower!
3 Cover the Humber Bridge 3 times! (2,220m x 28.5m)
4 Build a replica of the Tyne Bridge! (396m x 17m)
5 Stretch the length of Hadrian's Wall! (73 miles) 15 times
6 Each cartridge thrown into landfill can take up to 1000 years to decompose**.
7 In just 12 months, cartridge recycling could save 15 million litres of oil in the UK.