How Companies Profit From your Empty Ink and Toner Cartridges?

By: Mark Mason

Let's face it, we all want to help the environment and reduce pollution level. As we have all been told, recycling your printer cartridges is one of the best ways to do so. Billions of inkjet cartridges are being used up and thrown away each year, with most of them being ended up inside our landfill. This figure doesn't even include the more bulky toner cartridges.

Many organizations had been setup to combat this problem and it's great! But did you know that these companies are making a fortune simply by collecting your empty cartridges. As you probably seen on the market, there are many "Remanufactured Ink and Toner Cartridges" being sold. These are basically refilled and reconditioned cartridges that are remanufactured using your empties.

Big environmental organizations collect these empty cartridges and then sort out the good condition ones before selling them to other printer cartridge manufacturers. Once these third party manufacturers receive these empties, they will start remanufacturing them before distributing them to the market. Now, these recycled inkjet and laser cartridges are not cheap, if you compare them to the new compatible brands.

Therefore, we can assume that third party manufacturers are willing to pay a decent sum of money to organizations that are collecting these empty plastics on their behalf. The simple truth is more and more companies are starting to look into this niche market in a way to profit, at the same time being recognized as an environmental supportive business. Big TV ads and other media campaigns are shown across the globe each day all asking people to recycle their printer cartridges.

You may recall seeing one recently yourself and thought what a great organization this is. Don't thank them yet, because you're actually giving these companies easy money. However, this doesn't mean you should stop throwing away your empties to supportive organizations. You are still doing the right thing recycling, at the same time helping the environment. It is also very important that we all remain this way.

What you should do however is look for organizations who can offer reasonable incentives for your empties. There are tons of them around and it's not unsual to find a cartridge collecting company that will pay you good dollars for your particular model. Let's face it, printer cartridges are expensive enough. Everyone wants to help the environment, but if companies are making a big profits from collecting our empties, why shouldn't we get something back for supporting them?

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