Don’t be misled, there is no real reason that toner cartridges shouldn’t be refilled many times BEFORE they are recycled. This would cut waste dramatically, even if the cartridges were reused once there would be a huge saving in environmental costs. Multiplied across the world the world the benefits would be enormous. There is one main reason that the average toner cartridge is not refilled however, that is because the printer companies don’t want you to.

None of the components in a laser toner cartridge are so badly manufactured that they only last one print run, when the ink runs outs a printer cartridge would work perfectly well if it was refilled. In fact this is what used to happen especially with photocopiers in the passed, all the cartridges had little stoppers on them which you could pour toner ink to refill them. However the companies noticed if they took these stoppers out people had to buy new cartridges and their profits soared. Slowly over a year or two these all went, and the little stoppers seemed like a thing of the past.

But then many companies noticed that it was relatively easy to make you own hole and seal with a generic stopper by yourself and they started to sell kits. These kits allowed you to keep using the printer cartridge by refilling it with ink. It is something I do today, it takes a few minutes and involves no skill whatsoever (luckily for me). It is a great feeling to know that you can reuse these toner cartridges over and over again. Without the cost and expense of rebuilding, recycling or worse them ending up in landfill.

Why Printer Firms want Printer Cartridge Recycling

So how did our Green crusading printer companies react to this development, well it’s simple they put computer chips in their toner cartridges to stop you refilling them. They want you to use that cartridge once, and once only – by encouraging you to recycle that cartridge they maintain a ‘green persona’ whilst maximising their profits. Every time you refill a toner cartridge you are reducing their profits, the computer chips ensure that the toner cartridge won’t work until that too is reset. That computer chips sole purpose is to prevent you reusing and recycling yourself – by far the greenest option is actively prevented by the printing companies.

Sure you’ll hear horror stories about print quality, damage to your printer etc and even voiding of warranty. But let me reassure you about those, if you use quality toner the results will be no different to a new cartridge. There’s no risk of damage to your printer – you’re just refilling ink and even if there was in many instances the costs savings are so high you could buy a new printer after every other refill !

Fear not the companies who provide the refilling kits can in most cases. provide a replacement computer chip which will prevent the companies greedy practice of disabling them – it is annoying as it is another step but is pretty simple. So next time you look at the fancy green glossy recycling bag supplied to you with your expensive toner cartridge – remember at the heart of it is no environmental idealism, there is just the cynical maintaining of profits and their bottom line.

Give it a try, for the vast majority of printers you can add another stage before the printer cartridge recycling one. Refill the cartridges can save you hundreds believe me and it requires no special skill. There’s many firms around – the one I use is called Tonertopup but there are lots of others. Make sure they use quality compatible toner for each toner cartridge and you should save 80% of your running costs and do the world a favor.

Compatible Toner Quality Problems
Imagine you’ve set up your business to supply people and companies with compatible toner for them to refill their cartridges over and over. Customer will save so much money each time they do it that they’re bound to keep coming back for more. The costs will have to be significantly lower than the brand refills obviously but if the toner is of the same quality, there are no real issues.

Why try and make a few pennies by sending out inferior toner, you’ll get angry customers, no repeat business and lots of stress. The vast majority of companies in this line are very green minded and want to provide a good eco friendly service.

Take the Risk

Seriously have a look around, try and find some recommendations, ask a few questions of the supplier. The cost and environmental savings are so large it’s worth taking a risk. Even if you are really unlucky and get poor quality toner refills it won’t have cost very much. You can even put the cartridge away for when you need to do a big print run when quality is not that important.

Seriously in most situations where I have used toner refills in many, many printers the results have been indistinguishable from the brand toner refills. The average savings of about 80% make it a real boon in these days of rising prices.

I generally only use the one firm when I am buying compatible toner refills, of course if you’re in teh US it’s probably not worth using them – but use their checker tool to see if your printer can be refillled easily – you can find it here

You can then try and find a company nearer home, if anyone has any real experience of such companies outside the UK then I’d be really interested to hear about them.

When you read the marketing information, I see yet again the usual rubbish designed to pretend to the customer that they’re using technology to help the customer and reduce costs. Whereas the reality is that the Canon FC 120 is designed to maximise profits, what do you think ?

Neat Little Copier - Canon FC120

When you are checking through the specifications of this copier, you might read the section about teh innovative new toner cartridges. The marketing pitch goes something like this,

Canon’s unique All-in-One cartridge includes the core copying elements (toner, drum, cleaner unit) making your copier virtually maintenance-free

They are trying to tell you that replacing all the core components of a toner cartridge each time it’s run out of ink, makes it easy to maintain. I guess there is some truth to that, but what it fails to take into account is that this means that the cost of each printer toner cartridges for the Canon FC 120 is significantly more expensive. Each time your copier runs out of ink you are forced to replace not only the toner but the drum and cleaner unit as well and of course this costs.

Two Canon FC 120 Cartridges = New Printer

That’s it buy a couple of FC120 cartridges and you’ll have spent nearly the same money as the cost of the printer. Does technology really need us to be producing such disposable, one use and wasteful products. Is there not a better way of doing this?

Well I’ll tell you there is, this Canon printer cartridge is actually easily refilled. When the toner runs out, the components are fine, they are not so badly manufactured that they can only last one print run !! Most laser toner cartridges are fine for several runs despite what the manufacturers would have you to believe.

The Canon FC120 takes a couple of minutes to refill, of course your not replacing the other components in the cartridge you are simply refilling it. Look for a toner refilling company who will sell you some toner and ideally initially a small kit which makes the process childs play.

Check that they sell specific compatible toner for your Canon FC 120 and not the cheap universal toner that some companies sell. It literally takes a few minutes and each refill will be saving you about 80-90 % of the cost of a new cartridge, that’s potentially hundreds of dollars. Of course the other components in the Toner cartridge will eventually run out and you’ll notice the difference in quality and then it’s time to buy a new cartridge and repeat the process. Just to give you an idea of the savings, the company I use is here and they charge about $13/£9 for a bottle of toner for the FC120, after which it prints perfectly.  There are many good companies doing the same though.

YOU WILL SAVE A FORTUNE and each time you do this, you are making an environmental saving and reducing the amount of landfill required for each toner cartridge. The printer companies could easily make cartridges like the Canon FC120 easily refillable out of the box, saving the customers money and the environmental costs would plummet, of course so would their profits, so I guess we will never see this happen.

You do need to buy a replacement chip though when the printer shows toner low, but its very simple to replace. You should make sure that your toner cartridge is in good condition though. However a HP 2600 Toner cartridge in good condition should be able to be refilled 3 times at least. That’s usually a great saving on buying new cartridges, you’ll probably save abut 65-75% of the costs each time.

You’ll need a tool to create the hole which you can buy very cheaply from most toner refill companies. Ideally you’ll need to create two holes, one to empty the waste compartment, although if you only refilling once you may be able to skip this step.

Then you need to make a hole in the toner hopper toward the rear of the cartridge, then just pour in the replacement compatible toner with nice fresh ink ! Then you are nearly there, just the chip to reset.

The HP 2600 Laser printer has a reset chip on each cartridge, this sends status messages to the printer. Eventually it will just send toner empty messages and your HP 2600 printer will not print (even if it’s full of ink). You have to replace this chip in order to use the cartridge again, however it’s very inexpensive and simple to do. There should be instructions included with your chip if you have bought from a reputable seller of toner. It’s fairly simple though, you can easily replace the chip and replace it with a new chip and your toner cartridge will then work as new.

Of course they had that initial shock, we all do, when the first cartridges ran out of ink and they found out the cost of Epson replacement cartridges.  But luckliy for them and their local landfill site they managed to find a company who provided a replacement compatible toner cartridge kits for a fraction of the price.

Cartridges for the Aculaser C1100 are easily refilled

Well they managed to refill the cartridges without any dramas and kept printing until the toner ran out again.  The owner decided to keep refilling until she noticed the print quality deteriorating, and then to purchase a new cartridge.

Well the owner kept refilling these cartridges and when they got to 5 they decided to buy a new toner cartridge for their trust Epson.

The cost savings had already been huge and although the quality was as good as the original, you sometimes feel you shouldn’t push it too far.

Although I have to say there us little reason to not keep refilling the printer cartridge as much as you can.  So if you’re lucky enough to have an Epson C1100 toner cartridge, then do your wallet and the environment a favour and try refilling the cartridges!