To start with, an ink cartridge is that detachable part of your printer which contains a reservoir or reservoirs of ink which the printer uses to print out your documents. On occasion, the ink cartridge is fitted with the print-head as well. The different colors of ink are contained within their own respective reservoirs (like, if you use black ink, the black ink is placed in its own respective reservoir while other colors are placed in other reservoirs – one color in one reservoir). You can also get ink cartridges that have electronic contacts plus a chip used to talk to the printer.

If you are using a consumer inkjet printer then you will probably need a thermal inkjet cartridge to print out your documents. Epson is excluded from this category of thermal inkjet printers because it relies on piezoelectric inkjets instead of thermal inkjet cartridges to function.

Refresh Cartridges is a company that sells replacement inkjet and toner cartridges to the general public for their photocopiers, fax machines, or printers. Refresh Cartridges does its best to sell inexpensive yet high quality replacement inkjet and toner cartridges, with shipment to the customer included in the purchase price already.

The inkjet cartridges sold by Refresh Cartridges come under a wide variety of brand names, such as Brother, Samsung, Apollo, Hewlett Packard (or HP), Lexmark, Compaq, Xerox, Canon, Xerox, and Epson. These are inclusive of original inkjet cartridges, remanufactured inkjet cartridges, and compatible inkjet cartridges. Refresh Cartridges prides itself on selling such inkjet cartridges to the public because these are a good alternative to selling cheap cartridges whose quality may be substandard, even if they are inexpensive.

Refresh Cartridges also sells remanufactured toner cartridges for use on the following brand-name printers: Samsung, Minolta, Brother, Hewlett Packard or HP, Xerox, Lexmark, Canon or Epson. Refresh Cartridges tries to compete against retailers of cheap toner cartridges as well by offering quality products to the public.

You might be shocked to find out how expensive printer ink cartridges can be. They are that expensive because many printer companies do not make much money from the price they sell their printers at. To make a profit and recoup their investments, printer companies sell printer ink cartridges for their brand so that as consumers keep replacing printer ink cartridges the printer companies will earn back what they invested in the manufacturing processes.

That is partly why Refresh Cartridges aims to sell cheap cartridges to the public that are of good quality. Refresh Cartridges also has another service on the side which allows consumers to donate their retired inkjet cartridges to support certain charities. At the moment, Refresh Cartridges confines itself to accepting only Lexmark and HP (Hewlett Packard) inkjet cartridges. This recycling program initiated by Refresh Cartridges was designed to save plenty of inkjet cartridges from being dumped into landfills.

If you have Brother, Canon or Epson ink cartridges instead, you will be happy to know these ink cartridges are recyclable into other products. The reason these brands of ink cartridges are not remanufactured is because the financial returns are not good enough to make the program viable.