Slow Clap Presents: Ink Cartridges

Real Story.  Real Stupid.

How much printing do you do at work and at home?  Do you give much thought to where your ink cartridges come from or where they end up?  We all complain about how much cartridges cost but they cost a lot more than just what we spend on them.

Americans use 400 million inkjet and laser cartridges annually.  Of those 400 million cartridges, 375 million go into landfills.  That's one million per day or 11 per second.  As of 2012, 500 million laser cartridges and 1.8 billion ink cartridges have been dumped into landfills.  

There are a few reasons that ink cartridges shouldn't go into landfills.  One reason is that the cartridge itself can take an estimated 1000 years to fully decompose if it actually can fully decompose.  Another reason is that the resources used to create the cartridge will be lost instead of reused.  All those cartridges take up space, along with everything else that goes into a landfill, and at some point those landfills are full and new ones need to be established.  Finally, the ink left in the cartridge will release VOCs (volatile organic compounds) and heavy metals into soil and water.  This pollution is known as leachate.

The resources to produce laser and inkjet cartridges is draining on the environment.  The plastic comes from oil, also known as fossil fuels.  The metals, copper and aluminum, are mined and refined.  There is also the energy used to transport these materials to factories that use more energy in production, and even more energy to transport the finished product to stores where you can buy it and complain about the price.

To manufacture 100,000 cartridges, made from new materials, it would require 5 tons of aluminum, 40 tons of plastic, and 250,000 gallons of oil.  

How can we avoid so much waste and pollution?  Recycle your used cartridges properly.  Recycling is the best option that makes the biggest impact.  Refill your own cartridges if you can, or take them to be refilled.  Canon, Dell, and HP are usually able to be refilled.  Lexmark, Epson, and Brother use a counter chip in their cartridges that can't be reset even if you refill them.  Try to print less overall,  write it down if you can instead if printing, and print on both sides.

My two cents:  It's easy to forget how much goes into producing items that we use each day and take for granted.  I think it's important to think about where products came from and where they will go when we are finished with them.

Rating:  I give laser and inkjet cartridges two out of five possible slow claps.  When properly recycled, they aren't so bad.  When they are properly recycled.