How to Properly Recycle Your Old Printer Cartridges

Whether you are an individual or a business, it’s essential to dispose of your old printer cartridges properly. Doing so can reduce your company’s carbon footprint and help the environment by diverting cartridges from landfills.

Some printer manufacturers like HP and Canon offer recycling programs that are easy to take advantage of. They also offer a variety of options for returning your empty cartridges.

Take Them to a Local Office Supply Store

With 350 million printer cartridges ending up in landfills yearly, proper printer cartridge recycling is more important than ever. Thankfully, many convenient solutions exist. Click here to discover more about recyling your printer.

For those who do not have a local office supply store near them, you can also mail in your old printer cartridges for recycling. Some companies will provide free packaging materials and postage. If you are mailing, enclosing each cartridge in bubble wrap or newspaper is an excellent idea to minimize damage in the mail.

Epson offers a Product Stewardship Program that allows customers to recycle their old ink and toner cartridges for free. You can find details about this program on their website.

Canon is another company with a program for its printers accepting cartridges. They offer a prepaid ground shipping label to print online to return your cartridges for recycling.

Panasonic and Ricoh also have recycling programs for their ink and toner cartridges. If you have Panasonic or Ricoh ink or toner cartridges, visit the MRM recycling website for instructions on recycling them.

Inkjets from Brother, Xerox and other printer manufacturers often come with free shipping labels for you to use when sending them back for recycling. If you use a laser or toner cartridge from these brands, you may have to mail them separately.

Some office supply stores will refill your used ink and toner cartridges for you if you purchase them from them regularly. These cartridges are usually about half the price of new ones.

Drop Them Off at a Recycling Facility

If you’ve been throwing away your old printer cartridges, it’s time to stop and think about how they can be recycled appropriately. Cartridges aren’t easily degraded and can decompose in a landfill for up to 1000 years, so recycling them is crucial.

Some businesses even offer a reward program where they pay you back if you recycle your cartridges. If you’re a business owner or you work in an office where employees use a lot of printers, this is a great way to get some money back while making a small environmental impact at the same time.

Some manufacturers of inkjet and laser printer cartridges now offer recycling programs for their products, meaning you can simply drop them off at their local retail locations. Some companies, like Xerox, also make solid ink printers, which require up to 90% less energy and produce up to 30% less waste than a cartridge-based system.

Refill Them

If you’re looking to save the environment while earning some extra cash simultaneously, then donating your old printer gizmos is probably the best bet. 

Plenty of charities out there will take your ol’ trusty printer in exchange for a few bucks. Finding the best one for you may be a little bit of legwork, but it can be done. You might want to keep your eye out for a local thrift store that will also donate your old printers.

Sell Them

If you have a printer that is no longer in use, there are a few options for getting some cash back. You can sell them through a classified ad or try to find local junk shops and repair stores that accept printers. Depending on where you live, you may need to take some time to find these places.

You can also check with your printer manufacturer to see if they have any trade-in programs for old printers. These programs can help get a discount on a new printer from the same company.

These options will help you reduce the amount of waste going into landfills and incinerators. It will save the environment money, energy, and raw materials.

A few companies will buy your old printer cartridges for cash, though this amount varies from site to site. 

You can also sell your old cartridges online through several websites that offer to purchase them for cash. These sites typically pay between $3 and $4 per cartridge.

Some sites will also accept other types of cartridges that aren’t printers, including those from cameras and other electronics. These companies may pay a slightly higher price than the others on this list, but you should keep in mind that the price they’ll pay is usually based on how many cartridges you have and their condition.