Although April 22 is Earth Day, here at BehindTheBuy we've always got recycling on our minds. That's why we thought you'd like to know a little more about how important it is to properly dispose of one of the most common throwaway items in homes and offices: the printer cartridge.
Prices on ink jet and laser printers have come down so much during the past 10 years that many people now consider them to be commodity items. You see them in home offices everywhere. But did you know it can take up to 450 years for a discarded printer cartridge to decompose? That's a mighty long time. With more than 350 million cartridges thrown out every year, that's a mountain of some pretty tough waste building up all the time.
What's the real impact of printer cartridges on the environment?
- It takes about a gallon of oil to make a new toner cartridge.
- Almost eight cartridges are thrown away per second in the United States.
- In North America alone, more than 350 million cartridges per year are discarded in our landfills, and that number increases by 12 percent annually.
- Every remanufactured cartridge saves nearly 3.5 pounds of solid waste from being deposited in landfills.
- Seventy percent of used printer cartridges throughout the world are currently being thrown out
- In one year, if the world’s discarded cartridges were stacked end-to-end; they would circle the earth over three times.
In fact, many printer cartridges can be reused, something most consumers don't yet know. Well, now you know this important piece of information and you can do something with this knowledge.
One outfit that makes it easy to reuse and refill printer cartridges is called Cartridge World. You can find locations by going to their Web site at www.cartridgeworldusa.com and plugging in your zip code.
Here are some other quick tips to more efficient use of your tech or home office products:
- Use rewriteable CDs and DVDs so they can be re-used again.
- Print double-sided.
- Decrease margin areas to fit more copy on a page.
- Double-check your drafts before you print.
- Turn off all electrical equipment at night.
Will Safer
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About Will Safer and the BehindTheBuy blog
Will has been writing about consumer products, electronics and technology trends for more than 10 years. His first editorial home was technology trade magazine of record, TWICE (This Week In Consumer Electronics) where he was the first dedicated Web editor. His latest articles can be found in Conde Nast Portfolio and online at AOL News and Switched.com. Now he's happy to be a part of the team at BehindTheBuy.
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