HP fumbles toner cartridge recycling

When it comes to toner cartridge recycling HP is a funny animal. The moans and groans that come from said beast over the remanufacturing industry is laughable. Here is a snippet from a recent article from Recycler Magazines website entitled

"California’s ink cartridge recycling programme criticized"

Scott Canonico, Environmental Program Manager for HP said that used cartridges are worse for the environment because they are poorer quality and waste more paper.

"With that waste … any benefits of remanufacturing can easily be offset," he said. "That's why HP has stuck with a single use and recycling model – to deliver on our promise of quality and reliability."

This is funny when you read the rest of the article outlining the epic failure that is HPs ink cartridge recycling program, the article states:

The recycling program was designed to cut down on the amount of plastic and metals being sent to landfill. HP and state officials in California had agreed to ship used HP printer cartridges from state offices to Virginia (on opposite coast of the US) to be recycled.

According to The Sacramento Bee, only about 10 cartridges a year are recycled now using the program. More than 600 were shipped by California’s Department of General Services back to Virginia for recycling, but the newspaper says that none have left the agency's loading dock since March. Jim Butler, DGS' chief procurement officer told the paper that DGS is working on a more environmentally responsible purchasing contract requiring that all new state printers be compatible with remanufactured cartridges.

I find it funny that HP criticizes remanufactured toners as worse for the environment because they are poorer quality and waste more paper.

BS.

Here at ELS we have been remanufacturing toner cartridges for almost 20 years, and over 90% of our MPS customers opt for our remanufactured toners over OEMs for their machines. Our largest customers, companies, colleges or organizations that have 150-300 or more printers under contract can testify to the quality of our remanufactured toners.

you can see more about our green and earth friendly remanufactured toner cartridges here.

You wont find greenpeace spray painting hate mail on our roof. Can't say the same for HP.

Remanufactured Toner Cartridges

When the person in charge of buying toner for your office heads out to make a purchase, they have two options available to them. They can buy a brand new OEM toner cartridge which is expensive but can be expected to run perfectly out of the box or they can buy a remanufactured toner cartridge which for the most part will be significantly cheaper but according to some likely to give you unexpected print results. How can you know if its worth buying the remanufactured cartridge? By looking into the company that makes them and the customers who buy them. A good company will supply you with a list of customers if you express interest in their product and by getting said list you can do a little homework to see if their product is worth spending your money on. A few good questions to ask about the product include, how many businesses are buying remanufactured toner cartridges from this company? What businesses are buying remanufactured toner cartridges from this company? Are these businesses return customers? When a remanufactured toner cartridge does malfunction how does the company compensate the customer for their troubles? When you find that the feedback to these questions is positive you can generally feel good about buying the remanufactured toner cartridges. If you need more peace of mind you can always check to see if the company is registered with the Better Business Bureau and check to see what their rating is in addition to being able to read customer reviews.