According to reports, there are approximately 375 million toner cartridges that end up in our landfills every year. This calculation just shows that there are perhaps 11 toner cartridges thrown in a trash bin every second. This rate wouldn't be that alarming if only these toner cartridges are as biodegradable as a piece of paper but they're not. A single toner cartridge is composed of non-biodegradable materials such as plastic, metal, foam and toner that it takes barely 1,000 years for that cartridge to decompose.
And believe or not, if you put those 375 million cartridges end to end, you can circle the Earth three times over. Now, that is alarming! Tossing those toner cartridges over the bin may be more damaging as you thought it could be. In one toner cartridge, 3 quartz of oil is burned and used for its production. But if you will sum up the total of the oil used in one toner cartridge including its materials and transport then one toner cartridge is approximately made up of one gallon of oil.
Here's an infographic to let you further understand the scenario:
Not only that, according Stop Waste Organization, 5 up to 9 pounds of new virgin materials is being used in the manufacturing process of laser toner cartridges. These virgin materials include rubber, metal and oil as it was mentioned earlier.
To prevent these, printer manufacturers found a way and that's by offering recycling program to their consumers. Recycling Programs allows printer users to send their used or empty toner cartridges to OEM manufacturers or third-party companies that sell printer cartridges to use them in remanufacturing or recycling.
They refurbished these empty printer cartridges, clean, sort them out, disassemble and replace any worn parts with new ones before being refilled with new toner and then are re-sale as remanufactured toner cartridges or better known as recycled toner cartridges.
Recycling toner cartridges or rather buying them can help you decrease the number of those cartridges thrown in our landfills. Plus, it also helps in contributing in energy conservation and sustainability. So what are you waiting for? It's time to choose for the best. It's either you destroy this Earth or help in maintaining its beauty for our future generation.
Sources: Stop Waste Organization
