Isn't reuse better than recycling?
The waste hierarchy places different approaches to managing waste in order of environmental benefit: Reduce; Reuse; Recycle; Energy recovery; and Landfill. Landfill is the least desirable waste management outcome.
Over 50% of laser cartridges collected through the ‘Cartridges 4 Planet Ark' program are returned to the original producer for their environmentally accredited (ISO 14001) re-manufacturing and component recovery process.
The entire cartridge waste stream must be considered when evaluating any cartridge reuse, recycling or re-manufacturing program. Prior to ‘Cartridges 4 Planet Ark' around 15% of cartridges were reused, largely through third party re-manufacturing, leaving 85% going to landfill. In many cases, there was no solution for toner bottles, photocopier drums and thermal ribbons and most waste from reuse processes ended up in landfill.
‘Cartridges 4 Planet Ark' was launched to capture the 85% of cartridges that people were putting in rubbish bins. What isn't re-manufactured or reused is recycled with zero waste going to landfill from our Close The Loop recycling process.
