When I received my shiny new Lexmark laser printer - toner recycling was instantly brought to my attention for a variety of reasons. Firstly there was the inclusion of some nice toner recycling bags with pictures of trees and forests all over them, secondly barely two weeks later my toner cartridge had run out of ink.



Now I was quite shocked about this - I don't print a lot and had expected a laser printer to cut my printing costs slightly and reduce the aggravation of replacing toner cartridges all the time. The reason I discovered was that the cartridges supplied with my laser printer - where (get this) starter cartridges - basically they have produced sealed toner cartridges and put a tiny proportion of ink inside them. So they were now finished and needed to be recycled in their eco-friendly schemes. The environmental impact of producing these cartridges had been already incurred - approximately 2 litres of oil per cartridge but because they had virtually no ink in them that had been pretty much wasted.

If you buy a new laser printer beware you may have the same 'starter cartridges' inside your printer. I am afraid I was not very impressed with this - I mean why not just charge a little more for the printer and fill the toner cartridges up properly so they don't need to be recycled virtually immediately.

Don't get me wrong - when a cartridge reaches the end of it's useful life then toner recycling is the sensible option but the printer manufacturers are deliberately reducing the life span of these cartridges simply to make more money (and basically completely ignoring the environmental costs).

A laser toner cartridge could easily be used several times over if the ink could be refilled but the manufacturers took away the refill hole on most and replaced with a toner recycling bag. When companies like Tonertop up below made kits to refill the cartridges anyway - some manufacturers started putting computer chips which expired after so many prints (fortunately these can also be replaced). This is basically the same as putting a chip in your car so it won't work after 20,000 miles so you have to buy a new one !

The issue shows how so many big companies pay lip service to environmental issues and their priorities certainly don't lie in this area. Perhaps we can't blame them after all they are in business to make money not save the environment. It perhaps does lie with us the consumer to buck this trend - please check out how easy it is to reuse your toner cartridges by refilling them with ink before you even need toner recycling.