Recycle ink, just stop and think

Wednesday, August 11th, 2010 at 6:38 am

When your printer informs you that your printer ink cartridge is empty, you should not just throw it in the bin . As with many items discarded today, they can be recycled and reused.

Each UK household produces over 1 tonne of rubbish annually , all this rubbish adds up to about 31 million tonnes for the UK each year.

Every year, the average trash can contains enough unrealised energy for 500 baths, 3500 showers or 5,000 hours of television.

If all the aluminium drinks cans sold in Britain were recycled correctly , there would be 14 million fewer full trash cans per year. The total amount of municipal waste has increased to an estimated 29.7 million tonnes in England in 2004/05 compared to 29.1 million tonnes in 2003/04, an increase of 2.1 per cent. That of course will be significantly higher today .

There are many companies out there that will pay you for your old cartridges

Of some 60 million inkjet cartridges used each year in the UK, only about ten percent are recycled. This means that 57 million cartridges get thrown away each year and end up in landfill sites or are incinerated. Inkjet cartridges will take about 1,000 years to disintegrate in landfill sites.

Sending cartridges to landfill also costs money because of the landfill tax passed on to consumers through council tax or companies’ waste collection costs.

The following companies (some you will of heard of), will recycle your old ink cartridges and give you or a charity some well needed cash.

Recycle your used ink cartridges with Boot’s the chemist and you will receive 100 Advantage Card points for each inkjet cartridge that is eligible Boot’s will donate 20p to charity. They also recycle mobile phones, digital cameras etc.

just visit http://www.bootsrecycle.com/consumer/recyclecartridges.asp .

The following websites all give cash for the ink cartridges you send them. Visit the websites to see which cartridges are eligible and how much they will pay.

www.cashforcartridges.co.uk

www.cartridges4charity.co.uk

www.emptycartridge.co.uk

www.gtrecycling.com

Finally, Tesco’s will give you clubcard points or donate to their chosen charity, see below for details.

Tesco will give you 100 green Clubcard points for each one you recycle or you can select to donate up to £1 to CLIC Sargent – our Charity of the Year. Asan alternative, you can receive 50 points and donate 50p to CLIC Sargent.

Just visit, http://www.tesco.com/greenerliving/greener_tesco/ink_cartridge_recycling.page

So, please don’t ignore the issue, after all, you can earn a little cash, which is not to be sniffed at in these days of hardship.