I don’t have the most eco-friendly printer, but I’m one of the few Californians who knows it’s illegal to throw toner cartridges into the trash.
And — if staying legal and keeping the environment pretty isn’t enough — you can actually get some real perks.
How: Take your used ink cartridges to your closest Office Depot or Staples. The former’ll give you a free ream of recycled paper; the latter $3 off your next purchase.
I went for the $3 coupon (right).
If you have an HP printer cartridge, you can fill out a form online to get a pre-paid envelope mailed for you.
If you’ve got more than one cartridge, you can do some cool stuff — Recycle for Breast Cancer sounds the most interesting — The org donates all the profits from recycling to support the fight against breast cancer, while making the link between toxic environments and increased risks of breast cancer.
Both FundingFactory and RecycleFund will donate money to a school of your choice for sending in used cartridges. All three of those give you free prepaid envelopes or boxes — or even trucks — to make it easy for you.
March 17th, 2006 at 11:02 am
Funny you should mention computer ink issues… I just started looking into Staples’ ink recycling program.
It’s called “InkDrop” and is sort of like Netflix for ink cartridges. You still pay for your cartridges, but when one runs out, you throw it in the mail (pre-addressed envelopes), they recycle it, and then they send you a new one (free shippping).
You just need to buy two at first, so you have a backup as one is being mailed out. They automatically charge your credit card for the new one. And you can also mark “recycle” if you don’t want another ink cartridge.
I think I’m going to sign up for it. Here’s the link:
http://www.staples.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/spotCenter?cm_ite=inkdrop&cm_ite=inkdrop&catalogId=10051&cm_mmc=email_sbd_acq-_-product_022806-_-acq_business-_-Staples_InkDrop_URL&langId=-1&cm_ven=Glamour&storeId=10001&krypto=mfxq1nTSMWh0shUQOLdqenZmYsdyxioQ7pPBbIeLzdPPP1YJlaInQi6rvYN3Eoi6ccTq0rPMpshs%0AwqvEdTLaiw%3D%3D
March 20th, 2006 at 2:36 pm
Interesting! I might go for it too, but I’m gonna try and look into recycled cartridges first. In the meantime, I’m gonna go to Staples to use that $3 — Hopefully I can find recycled posterboards — need to make signs for a fair trade coffee event at USC :)