Here are 5 of the top reasons to recycle your empty inkjet cartridges.

Most importantly each recycled cartridge will save nearly 3 pounds of natural resources that are used for the production of a new cartridge.

Number two, for every inkjet cartridge that is recycled, an average of 3.5 oz. of oil will be saved. With the massive global demand for oil, supplies will eventually become more scarce.

The third reason you should recycle or reuse your empty inkjet cartridges is to reduce the strain on local landfills. An inkjet cartridge does not biodegrade in a landfill, as other waste will over time. Once a cartridge is discarded, it will be there for several hundred years. Did you know that each year over 300 million printer cartridges are thrown away? This equates into about 75,000 tons of garbage. To give you an idea how much that is, that he is equal in late to nearly 30,000 full grown African elephants.

Another good reason to recycle inkjet cartridges is because it can saving money. Recycling your empty cartridges provides empty cores to cartridge remanufacturing companies that in turn, professionally refill and sell to users at a discounted price. Consumers will see the same reliability, performance and quality as using an original brand OEM cartridge but at a lower cost.

Reason number five. It's very easy to recycle an empty inkjet cartridge. In fact, many of the companies out there that offer remanufactured cartridges actually have their own recycling programs you can take advantage of.

A common method for people to recycle inkjet cartridges is through the use of postage paid return envelopes that are sometimes included with an online inkjet cartridge purchase.

A return mailer (recycle envelope) is generally a self-sealing plastic bag that is pre-addressed to a recycling company. The user puts their empty inkjet cartridge into the bag, seals it, and drops it off at a post office or any mailbox. The postage is pre-paid, and the whole process takes just a few seconds.

If you are going to need more ink, a great way to recycle is through the use of an inkjet cartridge refilling service such as the Jetpak mailer program.

With the Jetpak mailer program, the customer purchases a special refilling service mailer in advance. When the customer runs out of ink, they place the empty cartridge into the postage paid mailing box and drop it in the mail. When the cartridge refilling company receives the empty cartridge, the refilling service cleans, inspects, and professionally refills the cartridges and mails it back to the customer.

In about a week the completed cartridge is returned to the customer at a big savings over buying a new cartridge. This method also lowers the amount of garbage going into our landfills.

Why recycle? Why not recycle?

It saves money, natural resources, reduces garbage and the strain on our landfills, and is the right thing to do.

Just because an empty inkjet cartridge is out of ink, doesn't mean it's broken.

It's just ready to be recycled.