If you are concerned about the environment, you already know not to just throw those empty cartridges and toners in the trash. Through those disposal means, your empty ink containers could end up sitting in the landfill for decades. The good news is there are better ways to dispose of these items and many of these methods are helpful to the environment.

Reasons Not to Throw Away

If you’re wondering if choosing one of the options below is worth the effort, just thin about a few statistics. Every single minute of the day, fewer than 500 cartridges are thrown in the trash. Those cartridges travel from our trash to the local landfill. If you took all of those cartridges’ weights and added them together, you’d get a figure that is equal to the same weight as more than 112,000 Volkswagen Beetles! That’s pretty heavy and that takes up a lot of space in our landfills.

Maybe you don’t care about landfills but as you’ll see below sometimes finding alternative ways to toss out the empties can earn you money, too.

Recycle

As interest in eco-friendly disposal methods has increased, more recycling programs have popped up and offer a good alternative to tossing toners and ink cartridges in the trash. You can find these recycle programs in a number of ways. Many stores have drop boxes where you place your empty cartridges for recycling. Some school programs and periodical local events also give you a chance to recycle them. If you don’t want to wait, go online and you’ll be able to find programs that will let you mail in your empties for recycling. Usually, the mailing materials will be sent to you for free.

Refill & Reuse

You can actually recycle your ink cartridges right at home in a way. If you think about it, each time you buy a new cartridge, you’re not just wasting the empty plastic cartridge but also all of the packaging that comes with that cartridge. To avoid that, you can simply have the cartridge refilled. You can purchase the kits in your local stores and most are fairly easy to use. Be warned that some of the printer companies don’t like the refill option so don’t wait until your cartridge is completely empty or else you may have a hard time getting your printer to recognize the replaced refilled cartridge.

Return

A number of manufacturers have programs available that allow you to return your empties in order to save money on your next purchase. For example, Lexmark toner cartridge packages come with instructions on how to mail back the empty toner to the company. Usually, the discount you would receive is already subtracted from the purchase price in good faith that you will return the toner. In other cases, you may have to return the empty cartridge yourself then receive a discount. You can also find these return discounts being offered by some printer supply stores.

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