Hidden Benefits of Recycling Ink Cartridges

In these days of environment awareness, I want to make my "footprint" a little bit smaller. I have no idea how to build a windmill and I can't quite afford a hybrid vehicle at the moment, so I began looking for other ways to do my part. Of course I recycle and compost and, I am happy to say, I only put one bag of garbage on the curb every two weeks. But I wanted to do more.

I am a freelance writer and I use a lot of paper and ink. The paper is easy to get rid of; I simply recycle it and know it will be reused. But it always bothered me to put that messy, plastic ink cartridge into the landfill or even the recycle bin because I know how long it takes plastic to break down. Think about the number of cartridges being tossed into our landfill everyday in the United States alone. Today, almost every home has at least one computer and printer, so the number is staggering.

And then I discovered something quite interesting. Did you know that most large cartridge manufacturers like Hewlett-Packard, Canon and Dell have free cartridge recycling programs? It's true. Many provide the shipping materials you need right in the new cartridge package. You just fill out the label, slip your old cartridge or cartridges into the box or envelope and drop it into the mailbox. The postage is even pre-paid. Any manufacturer that does not provide the materials in the packaging can be contacted online at their website and they will gladly send you what you need to get rid of that nasty, old cartridge.

Staples and Office Depot make it even easier. You just drop off your used cartridges to them and they take care of it for you. Staples will even give you a $3.00 coupon toward a new cartridge when you recycle any HP, Lexmark, or Dell cartridge. Office Depot has a coupon plan too. Ask about it the next time you visit one of their stores.

How would you like to donate $3.00 to your local school every time you recycle one of those old cartridges? Staples has a program called Recycle for Education. For every used cartridge you recycle, they will donate $3.00 to the local schools.

There are all kinds of programs out there that will donate the proceeds from the recycling to a worthy charity of your choice. Get on your computer and call up Recycle 4 Charity and find out about the work they are doing to make our environment cleaner and help certain charities at the same time. How good does that make you feel? You get rid of an old cartridge and a local school or charity reaps the rewards.

So, maybe you can't build a windmill or afford a hybrid car but you can easily participate in any one of the above programs and feel really good about yourself.

Sources:

*Staples, "In-Store Technology Recycling Program", staples.com

*Office Depot, "Environmental Stewrdship Program", officedepot.com

*Hewlett-packard, "Supplies Recycling", hp.com

*Dell, "Dell Ink Recycling", dell.com

*Canon, Canon and the Environment-Recycle, canon.com

*Recycle4Charity, Ink Cartridge Recycling Program, recycle4charity.org