To understand the environmental cost of Printer cartridges you must understand the different kinds of printer cartridges available on the market.According to Bloomberg Businessweek, there is a $35 billion fight over printer cartridges. This includes name brand OEM cartridges, remanufactured cartridges, and new built single use compatible cartridges from overseas.
Name brand printer cartridges are produced by the original equipment manufacturer, such as HP, Canon, Epson, etc. These cartridges are generally expensive leaving individuals to search for low-cost alternatives.
A remanufactured cartridge, starts with a used or empty OEM printer cartridge that has been recycled, cleaned, rebuilt, refilled, and tested for quality assurance. If remanufactured professionally it should meet or exceed the quality performance of the name brand.
Compatible printer cartridges are new built, single use cartridges. Often considered “knock-offs” or counterfeit cartridges of the OEM’s printer cartridges. These cartridges are manufactured overseas, made from all new parts as opposed to recycled or remanufactured printer cartridges.
Both remanufactured and compatible cartridges are low-cost alternatives to the high-priced OEM printer cartridges, but at what cost do these new build single use compatible cartridges have on the environment?
It’s estimated that over 375,000,000 cartridges end up in U.S landfills every year, that is over a million a day and roughly 11 cartridges every second. Printer cartridges can take up to 1000 years to decompose and it takes about a gallon of oil to produce a new toner cartridge.
More than two ounces of oil is used to produce every printer cartridge. That means we are going through more than 4,000,000 gallons of oil for cartridges each year.
The big issue with new built single use compatible cartridges from overseas is they cannot be recycled adding more plastic waste to our landfills.
The U.S Cartridge Remanufacturing industry evolved as a solution for single use cartridges in a multibillion-dollar consumable printing market. A large abundance of waste can be reduced, or practically eliminated if consumers choose to buy U.S remanufactured cartridges as opposed to new built single use compatibles from overseas.
U.S made Remanufactured printer cartridges extend the lifecycle of a genuine OEM cartridge and can be 50% less in price. Remanufactured cartridges are truly the only eco-friendly, recycled print consumable products on the market.
If you are looking for a low-cost alternative to buying OEM branded printer cartridges, consider remanufactured cartridges over compatibles.
Over the past 20 years, DoorStepInk has recycled millions of cartridges that would have ended up in our landfills.
DoorStepInk.com Brand cartridges are remanufactured in the USA using a rigorous process, where every single used OEM cartridge is inspected, cleaned, rebuilt, refilled, and tested for quality assurance. DoorStepInk offers a 100% guarantee that our products will meet or exceed the OEM brand or your money back!
If chose to purchase OEM cartridges, please remember to recycle your empty cartridges. DoorStepInk offers a free recycle service to mail in your used ink cartridges from your home or office. Simply visit www.doorstepinkrecycle.com to request a free U.S. Postal service label.
