Recycling ink cartridges in the US

ECCO Recycles their website is eccorecycles.com

You may want to check with your local schools, since they work with schools . I have a co-worker that asked everyone to bring their used ink cartridges, so the school can benefit from the proceeds. ECCO basically buys the cartridges from the schools.

Sorry, I don't know of any program similar in the U.S, but with the huge number of people reading Photo.net, I suppose it wouldn't do any harm to mention that Canada has a similar program. I would be surprised if there wasn't something like this happening somewhere in the U.S. Good luck.

http://www.think-food.com/about.html

http://www.think-food.com/dropoff.html

I'm not sure how related this is, but I know there are some stores that donate to charity based on ink cartridges turned into them for recycling. I think Staples contributes to local schools for each one. Not quite the same thing, but at least supporting a good cause with our trash...

Recycling those cartridges is a good idea. But never send them back to the manufacturers for recycling. I believe HP offers to take them back from you in exchange for some small money or coupon for buying from them again. What will happen is they get them back and destroy them. I don't doubt the recycling they do. But basically what they do is to destroy these refillable cartridges from the market so that remanufactured (refilled) cartridges will no longer exist. As a result you will have to buy new next time because the recyclers have no more empty cartridges to remanufacture any more. You do know how much new cartridges will cost you, don't you?

In our town, there is a young girl with a severe disease. Local organizations have been raising money to help with her medical expenses by recycling carts, & also cell phones.

If anyone wants to send these items for recycling, the address of collection is:

C.B.S. 21 Passaic Ave. Pompton Lakes, NJ 07442 USA

At least one of the large US office supply chains (Office Depot, Office Max or Staples; I forget which) runs periodic promotions that give you a discount off products (paper, new cartridges, etc), when you recycle spent electronics-based cartridges (i.e., HP, Epson, but not Canon).

To Dave Cheng's post, I don't know whether HP reuses / remanufactures recycled cartridges, or if they break them down (crush/melt/whatever) for reuse of the comprising materials. Not that I think it matters; even if their business plan is to eliminate the supply of used cartridges refilled by 3rd party manufacturers, there will "always" be a ready supply of cheaper (both $$ and quality) 3rd party cartridges. I think HP's program is designed as much to ensure customer satisfaction with high quality consumables as to make a buck on the obviously high margins on new OEM cartridges. (No, I don't work for HP; I don't even own any of their printers any longer.)

At any event, it's better to reuse the materials in a spent cartridge than to dump it into a landfill.