Diverting Printer Consumables from Landfill

Apr 6, 2022

3 min

Diverting Printer Consumables from Landfill

Did you know that ink and toner cartridges can take 1000 years to fully decompose in a landfill!

By recycling your toner cartridges you will be helping to divert thousands of tonnes away from landfill each year.

According to the government, the UK generates almost 250m of toners & ink cartridge of waste every year. This has a huge impact on our environment and also has an impact on your business costs. In order to reduce the amount of waste we produce, the government is moving towards ‘ Net Carbon Zero ' which means that businesses across the UK will need to reduce, reuse and recycle wherever possible.

Here at Boxx-Direct we are passionate about helping you become ' Greener ' where possible and recycling ink and toners is just one of the areas that we are committed to, which will help you reduce your carbon footprint and therefore helping you to achieve any ambition for Eco-Friendly accreditations.

How can Boxx-Direct help?

We feel that everyone has a responsibility to help our environment in terms of waste and reducing carbon. We collect all of your original and compatible toner cartridges, ink cartridges, drums, maintenance kits and fuser units free of charge and send them to a specialist recycling plant to be disposed of in a responsible manner.

We have a long standing relationship with our recycling partner and they collect over 800,000 ink and toner cartridges every month. The majority of which are remanufacured into cost effective alternative products. A small number of items are damaged or broken and cannot be recycled so each item is broken down and used to make new products.

How Your Printer Toner Cartridges are Reused

Once your toner cartridges are collected by our couriers, who hold all the relevant Waste Transfer licenses (available upon request) we transport the printer toners back to warehouse, where they are manually sorted into categories – those that can be used as complete toner cartridges are sent straight back to the manufacturers as they are, to be reused and recycled as remanufactured toners, those where certain parts can be reused are sent back to the manufacturers to be made into new, remanufactured ink toners, and those which are damaged or unusable which are sent to a UK plastic recycling plant, where they are melted down and then sent off to be remanufactured into new product, such as casings for pens. Less than 1% of all the ink cartridges we collect from our clients is wasted or sent to landfill.

Printer Toner Recycling and the Environment

Brand new toner ink cartridges use natural resources from the planet, and compared to recycled toners, uses up to 80% more energy during the production process including around 5 litres of oil to make the plastic it is made from.

Aluminium and copper are also mined and refined for each brand new ink cartridge, for example bauxite is mined and has to be processed to get aluminum. We therefore use materials born out of science as opposed to using recycled parts that reduce the need to do so.

Of course by disposing of used toners incorrectly adds to pollution and ink and the plastic units themselves can take up to 1000 years to break down. Not to mention the ink or toner powder can have a detrimental effect on the surrounding land and causes further pollution.

So wherever we can use recycled plastics we can do our bit to protect our natural resources, avoid excess production and reduce harmful emission, as well as protect our environment. By the same token sending our used toner cartridges off to be recycled rather than to landfill helps to provide the materials to drive the move away from brand new ink cartridge production

Go to our Toner Recycling Page and Submission Form

Daniel Duke

Apr 6, 2022