InkTec Zone Saving the Environment One Cartridge at a Time

"The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty.
The activist is the man who cleans up the river. " ~ Ross Perot

Did you know …

• Over 70% of all printer users throw away their used cartridges
• More than 1,000,000 inkjet cartridges are thrown away every day, adding 60,000 tons of empty inkjet cartridges to landfills each year.
• Because toner cartridges are made of industrial grade plastic, it takes between 500 and 1,000 years for a printer cartridge to decompose.
• Almost half a quart of oil is used to produce each new inkjet cartridge.

There are solutions …

• If a cartridge is refilled just three times there is a 75% reduction in waste.
• Each year, roughly 37,771 tons of waste is kept out of landfills when toner cartridges are remanufactured.
• By recycling ink cartridges, over 19 million gallons of oil can be saved each year.

According to a recent article in Imaging Spectrum Magazine, by Tricia Judge, there is a small city in China called Guiyu, where workers are paid $1.50 per day to salvage used toner. They sweep the toner out of the plastic casing by fingers or paintbrushes. Then the plastic casing and other electronic refuse is burned or discarded along the Lianjiang River. That river should be used to supply the drinking water for the people of Guiyu, but it now has 200 times the acceptable levels of acid and 2,400 times acceptable levels of lead. Even after boiling, the water is not drinkable.

Toner contains carbon black, a possible human carcinogen. Manufacturers claim that the toner is a respiratory irritant, but not toxic under normal use. Obviously what is happening in Guiyu is well beyond “normal” exposure. The sad truth is that about 80% of all e-waste ends up in containers bound for Asia. The children of Guiyu who once breathed clean air and drank clean water now run and play in a toxic waste dump.

InkTec Zone is committed to reducing waste and protecting the environment in the United States, Asia and throughout the world.