The Lavergne Group offers a new way to recycle old ink cartridges
Do you enjoy recycling your old ink cartridges as a way of minimizing waste, helping the environment, or otherwise just not discarding things? If so, then you’re in luck, because HP and the Lavergne Group have recently come up with a new technique for recycling older plastic ink cartridges into new, usable ink cartridges.
source: eweek.com
One of the biggest problems with recycling has always been the distribution of materials. While many consumers think of plastic as this universal substance, the truth of the matter is that plastic actually comes in many forms and styles, most of which aren’t interchangeable for a specific purpose. The more of a product that can be created with recycled materials, the less expensive it is to produce entirely new parts and fill in the gaps…But until now, many locations have simply discarded their old cartridges rather than taking advantage of the many recycling options available.
The Lavergne Group is hoping to change some of this with the new technique of “closed-loop recycling”. The basis of this technique is the creation of a new type of plastic; by itself, this is not a particularly noteworthy event, considering how many different styles of plastic already exist. What’s interesting about this process is that by combining plastic from water bottles (which is available in relatively large supplies) with plastic parts from many of the inkjet cartridges of HP and adding in a few things, the resulting plastic is so close to the original plastic that it can be used on the very same machines. This significantly cuts down on retrofitting costs.
source: hp
Research on this began in 2000, with a focus on making it less expensive to create printer cartridges. One thing every manufacturer has to keep in mind is that there is not an infinite supply of materials, so a cost-effective recycling process can significantly expand the lifetime of the product. Even better, the monetary savings can help see the company through troubled times or expand its operations to more areas of the world. The savings from a single cartridge may not seem like all that much, but to date, over one billion inkjet cartridges have been created using this method. Even if this process saved only a penny each, that would still be quite a lot of money…And the actual savings are much, much higher.
So, how can you participate? The best thing that you can do at your home or office is join a cartridge recycling program if you haven’t already. This will help to ensure that every used cartridge gets where it needs to be in order to provide the maximum benefit for recycling. You’ll be able to avoid hauling more cartridges to the dump, contribute to the efficient use of non-renewable (but reusable) resources, and otherwise make the most out of your printing needs. The more you print, the more important recycling can be. This process can recycle the same material quite a few times, after all, so you might end up using some of the same plastic over and over…And that’s a great way to do things.
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