How do remanufactured cartridges save the environment? First it saves resources. Inkjet cartridges are made of plastic and other materials. When you purchase used cartridges, you reduce the use of resources that could be used for something else. This is especially true of nonrenewable resources such as oil. Not only are you saving oil that is used in manufacturing the plastic, but also the fuel that is used to run the plants and create new cartridges.

On top of that, when you reuse a product there is less waste ending up in landfills. Large quantities of trash end up in the dump taking away space and polluting our environment. When you buy used cartridges less waste is disposed of, which is healthier for the environment. Some companies will even provide free shipping labels for you to mail the empty inkjet cartridges back to them. This not only cuts down on trash fees, but can save you fuel as well. You can deposit empty containers into the mailbox, eliminating the need to drive to a recycling center.

Remanufactured inkjet cartridges reduce printing costs. Many times new cartridges are not filled to capacity. Since they are not full, you run out quicker and have to spend more money to replace the cartridges. Used cartridges are usually filled all the way. This way you can actually get twice as much use out of a reused cartridge than a new one. So you can keep printing and save money. To top it off, reused cartridges cost 30% – 60% less than new ones. So you can save money every time you purchase another one.

Some manufactories imply that if consumers use one of these remanufactured inkjet cartridges that they can ruin the printer and void the warranty. There are a few problems with this claim. The first is that reputable companies clean and inspect the cartridges before selling them. The likelihood of a problem with these cartridges is the same as those of new cartridges. Also, remanufactured cartridges are compatible with new ones as they are the same cartridge. Only repaired, refilled, cleaned, and inspected. So there is no compatibility issue unlike if you buy the new generic cartridges. The threat of voiding the manufacturers’ warranty is a violation of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Improvement Act and the antitrust act.

Remanufactured inkjet cartridges are a smart way to save money in your business practices. Since they save a tremendous amount of money and they are safe to use in printers, there is really no reason not to use these inkjet cartridges. The environmental benefits of using these cartridges mean that your business will be able to run for years to come.

Epson Stylus SX215

The reason that Epson are selling these printers at such a low price is because their business model depends on it.     In the UK its currently about £50, which is very cheap in my opinion but no great surprise.

You see Epson and all the major printer manufacturers don’t make the majority of their profits on selling printers like the Epson Stylus SX215 at that low price.   They actually make very little, in some cases I suspect virtually nothing on the hardware cost themselves.

The model requires that they make money on consumables, which when you think about it makes a lot more sense from a profit point of view.    The paper and printer costs of the average ink jet printers is much more than the costs if the printer itself.

Why is the Epson SX215 so interesting?

I’ll tell you why, simply because it perfectly illustrates the dilemma facing the printing companies.  They are locked into this business model which is crumbling around them.  You see forcing you to buy something like consumables is fraught with dangers – here’s just a few of them.

• It’s not Environmentally Friendly – this is probably of least concern to the companies, who can always spin their approach into a green looking one.  The most environmentally friendly way to keep a printer running is to produce high quality toner and ink cartridges which can be easily and cheaply refilled by the user – unfortunately although entirely possible this massively cuts back potential profits.
• How to force consumers to buy your refills (legislation) – from a legal point of view this is actually quite difficult.  Many countries have legislation which stops you doing things like saying the a guarantee is invalid  if you don’t use their refills
• Technical Enforcement – like many printers the cartridges on the Epson Stylus SX215 have little chips on them to force you to use only Epson Inks, however these are actually very easy to copy and are being copied in cheap replaceable ink cartridges

Juts  looking at these three issue you can see companies like Epson have a problem from many sides with this business model, from environmental, legal and the technical sides they are under attack.  Let’s just look at the comparative costs to better illustrate -

I’m using the amazon costs for this printer just to illustrate properly

• Printer Cost at Amazon UK  - Listed at £49.99 here
• Epson replacement Cartridge Cost – 26.74 for four here – so that’s about £6.68 each.
• But freely available and actually pushed by Amazon are these inks 10.99 for 12 here – which is about £0.91 each.

That makes the cost of the Epson cartridges 700% more expensive than buying compatible inks with a built in chip, that’s one heck of a price difference !

There will of course the usual nonsensical arguments about printer damage and print quality of course. But let’s take print quality first – lets assume the Epson ink produces slightly better prints (which is by no means guaranteed) on the Epson SX215. But most people are not that bothered about fantastic print quality for every print out, in fact it could be argued that the average buyer of a cheap multipurpose printer like this just wants a simple printer that makes decent copies – are they prepared to pay 700% more for a possible slight quality boost?

The printer companies will have to make a decision soon, the problems of sustaining this environmentally unfriendly business model are mounting. The free market is hitting this rip off model used to overcharge buyers of their printers.

I hope they see sense and start making these printers refillable – stop wasting time and resources in producing killer chips in printers and cartridges just to make more money. If they did this and supplied quality refills at a reasonable price they might actually do rather well from it, people might stop refilling with compatible toner and use theirs instead.

One third of all businesses are now recycling printer cartridges, whether they be laser toner cartridges or inkjet cartridges. The amount of garbage that goes to landfills increases every day; and because huge cities such as Los Angeles and New York generate such a gigantic amount of garbage every year… they are deciding to get rid of their garbage in disastrous ways.

Many beaches are now as much as 70 percent plastic. If you separate the sand particles from the plastic particles, that’s what you end up with. These multi-colored plastic balls are slowly replacing the sand. How long will it take before they’re 100% plastic. Plastics increase the number of free radicals in the air. The more free radicals that we breath means the more our bodies have to try eliminating those free radicals via our Glutathione Peroxidase systems. One of the reasons we’re loading our bodies up with antioxidants such as Vitamin-C, Beta carotene, Vitamin-A and drinking so many drinks with Acai and Mangosteen in them is because we are a free-radical mess. How often do you change out your printer cartridge? Once a week? Every one of those has to go somewhere. Many are going directly into our oceans. Recycling printer cartridges is a way you can reduce the amount of plastics which are going into our oceans and into the air.

Free radicals are the things which age our bodies. They’re the thing which causes us to get cancer. They’re the things which tire us down, make us lethargic and increase the amount of pain that’s in our bodies. Why is everybody coming down with such ailments as fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome? Why have levels of autism shot off the charts? Will they find that all this plastic nightmare that we’ve created is related to plastics? Will all of these companies who rely upon the continuance of a billion tons of plastic a year ever change their minds about creating and dumping all those plastics into our environment? Probably not… so, the answer which makes sense right now is, recycling printer cartridges makes sense.

It’s really not that hard to recycle printer cartridges. Look on the instructions that came with your inkjet or toner cartridge and they’ll outline exactly the procedure you should use when you wish to recycle the printer cartridge. Contact Laser-tone International at 1(800) EARTH-58 and they’ll even pick up the old cartridge and deliver the new one back to you very quickly.

Also, with a little checking online you can find out about which companies in your area purchase printer cartridges. Some companies are creating cross-referenced lists which show your particular cartridge and how it can be remanufactured into another laser printer cartridge. There are things you can do, such as recycling printer cartridges, to improve the world and reduce the numbers of plastics that are being dumped into it.

Printer costs $30, color cartridge costs $20; black-and-white costs $14. You think I’m kidding? Just look for yourself. Some inkjet printers have all of the colors the printer takes in one module and the black cartridge as a separate cartridge. The advantage of those is, when the color cartridge runs out, you don’t have to replace everything. Or, if the black-and-white is what you always use, you don’t have to replace the color cartridge. This is when refilling inkjet cartridges starts looking good.

The very cheapest inkjet printers oftentimes have only one cartridge. It will contain all of the color cartridges combined with the black-and-white cartridge in the same unit. The most expensive inkjet printers have six or seven colors and one black cartridge. Whether they separate out the various colors tends to have to do with how many colors the cartridge has. When you buy refill kits, they generally are either for refilling three-color cartridges (cyan, magenta, and yellow) or four-color cartridges (cyan, magenta, yellow and black). So, refilling inkjet cartridges isn’t a thing that everybody will be able to do.

Since the 1400s, people have known that you can mix different colors together to make the colors of the rainbow. However, they were incorrect as to which were the three additive primary colors. Back, then and in art schools even today, they will tell you that the three primary colors are Red, Yellow and Blue. They are wrong, of course. The real three primary colors are Magenta (what they’re calling red), Yellow and Cyan (what they’re calling blue).

They tell you that if you mix blue with yellow you get green; and if you mix that dark blue they say is the primary, you get a rather brown/green. It’s the easiest to fool yourself into thinking it’s really green at least. After that, things fall apart with their system of lies. You mix what they call red (closest color in art stores is called cadmium red) to yellow and you get a really brown/orange. Compare it with an orange and you’ll see the difference immediately. That isn’t orange. You get a pure beautiful orange, however, if you mix yellow with magenta. Poof, there it is, a beautiful orange. The reason they didn’t use magenta in the middle ages? There was no such color that you could get from minerals or vegetables that comes close to magenta.

To make purple is even worse, though. Mix that blue they suggest is ‘blue’ in the color wheel, which has its closest counterpart to ‘Ultramarine Blue’, and you get a very brown purple. On the other hand, if you mix cyan to magenta, you get a true beautiful deep purple.

So, that’s why they use the real primary colors of Cyan, Magenta and Yellow in an inkjet cartridge. If you mix all three of those together, however, you don’t really get black. You get a muddy brown color. IF all three colors were pure colors, you’d end up with black. Because they’ don’t, they need to also use black in order to print a black color. Kits for refilling inkjet cartridges, then, tend to either have cyan/yellow/magenta/black, or just cyan/magenta/yellow or black all by itself. The instructions are always included.

At least now they’re appearing on big Review focussed sites like Amazon will mean we can all share experiences in different toner cartridges. Of course as I always say the best kits will be ones that use the best ink, compatible toner for that particular printer. I’d be very wary of the very generic toner kits but at least with Amazon you can see what people think about them.

I’ve just been looking and there isn’t the range as from the specialist toner companies so far but I’m sure they’ll all end up joining Amazon eventually. Good thing is we’ll find which are hopeless and which work well. Don’t listen to all the rubbish about destroying your printer it’s not true, and even if it was the money you save would easily buy you a new printer anyway for the cost of new cartridges.

It’s worth checking out, not that many reviews for some of the companies but hopefully we’ll find a few more decent companies to help cut our printer costs down.