Now I won’t have too much of a go at Brother, they’re not nearly as bad as some of the other printer companies.  But if you’ve never used one of these printers let me tell you about a stupid little device that brother have fitted on all the toner cartridges for the Brother HL4070CDW and a few other printers.

Many of the brother printers or rather cartridges count the number of pages that they are supposed to print and then stop working.  So how ridiculous is that, in many cases you’ll see that the cartridge still has toner still left inside it, in some instances this can quite a considerable amount.

Brother HL4070CDW Toner

So how stupid is that ?

It’s a device that tells you when you have run out of toner, even if you haven’t and then stops your printer working.  Lets look at this from an environmental side, this little device has been designed and produced for the sole purpose of telling you to replace your cartridge.

Of course there is another way of seeing when your printer is running out of toner, by looking at the page.  It doesn’t really take Sherlock Holmes to figure out when you need more ink.

Now you can reset  these cartridges, on the side you should find a little flag gear which you can rotate and reset this stupid invention.  At the time of writing this wasn’t on the starter cartridge you get with the machine, presumably so that you’ll get fleeced on your very first print run.

How much toner does this waste?   How many cartridges will get thrown away because of this device stopping them using a toner cartridge for no reason?

Or perhaps we should ask – how many more TN-115BK cartridges will Brother sell, how much more profit will they make to justify this completely unnecessary device?  It’s like your fuel warning light coming on in your car and the car becoming unusable instantly!

This is how most of these companies make money, by getting you to buy as many of their consumables as possible, forget about the cost of the printer this is how they make their money.  Environmentally it is becoming increasingly unacceptable to do this !

By the way when  you have learnt the little trick to reset the page count device, these toner cartridges are actually very easy to refill – you can find all you need here – TonerTopup

If you’re lucky then some cartridges are so well made that they can keep being refilled easily.  I know a local business that has been using a tried and tested Epson Aculaser C1100 for years now.   Which is pretty impressive for a business as it’s not a terribly expensive printer.

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!

In these times, you’d think every manufacturer would be trying to cut down on waste, trying to reduce their own and customers carbon footprint.  Well although virtually every company will of course pretend they are doing this, the reality is often completely different.

You would of course think in this environment that making something last as long as possible was a good thing.  Although I’m sure washing machine companies would be happy if we changed machines every year – it’s a terrible thing to do for the environment.

Can you imagine  then if you were forced to buy a new Television every two years?  Or after you’ve watched so many hours using your TV set that a computer chip shut it down and you couldn’t use it?

Sounds outrageous ?

I think so but that is exactly what printing companies do as a matter of routine.   Many more printer cartridges are being supplied with so called ‘killer chips’ .  These chips communicate with your printer and effectively stop it working after a specific period.   They are designed to stop people reusing the cartridges or refilling them with compatible toner ink.   The chips are specifically designed to create more waste (and of course more profit for the printing firm)

Refilling and reusing toner cartridges is in every ones interest, it cuts down on landfill, stops replacement cartridges being made or the energy expended in re-manufacturing components when they don’t need them.

So next time you look at a printing company recycling scheme, remember most of them are actively promoting this simply so they can make money.   The green option is to take responsibility for the whole of their products lifecycle and allow it to be used efficiently.  That does not mean creating computer chips with the sole intent of making a cartridge unusable so they can sell you a new one !!!

Either at home, work or college we always seem to have too many printers.   The costs of running lots of different printers are not unsubstantial, different makes and speeds all make for a toner ordering nightmare.   I work at lots of different sites and it is amazing how many times I’ll see a corridor of offices with a couple of people in each.    Each and every office often have their own printers, I’ve seen hundreds of standalone printers plugged into the backs of their computers when they have a vast selection of network enabled printers as well.

Now ok, I know sometimes there are privacy and confidential issues with sharing printers but even that can be solved if required.   It seems an awful waste to have loads of duplicate hardware when a single printer could probably supply a whole corridor of offices fairly easily.    Better still we all get a little exercise going to pick up our printouts.

Think about it, could you reduce the number of printers in your organisation, if you can you’ll almost certainly reduce costs.  In some organisations printers are barely active 1% of the time – that’s 99% unused utilisation.    It makes little sense to have roomfulls of printers operating at 1% capacity, I’m sure business wouldn’t do this in other areas.  Would you buy a new car that was used 1% of the time, how about a canteen – 1% utilisation means you don’t need it, in anyones language.

Experts assess that you can save at least 20% of your printing costs by having an optimal number of printers in an organisation.  In any business that is a serious saving and if you factor in the time and maintenance costs it could be significantly higher.  So go on have a think about how you use printers, can you reduce it ?  Think of the toner costs, the environmental impact, the energy they used being switched on and rarely being used. Even think of  the space they take up!!

Before I go into a simple economic reason for using toner refill kits, lets first examine the environmental argument.    To make a new toner cartridge, you have to use up natural resources, it’s a simple arbitrage, we swap these raw materials to give us a shiny new toner cartridge.   To make a toner cartridge for your average laser printer it requires between 1 and 2 liters of oil.  So every single time you refill your cartridge you’ll save that amount of oil being used, add to that the extra costs in aluminium and steel that are needed and you can see it can make an impact.

Approximately (and obviously this changes) 44 million laser cartridges are sold in Europe every year, and about 78% of these are used once and thrown away.   If every one refilled each cartridge only once you can see the huge saving in resources that would happen relatively easily – shouldn’t we really be doing the simple things like this ??

When I read reasons (usually from people with a vested interest) for not refilling your toner cartridges you get many reasons but the one that usually annoys me most is the damage you could cause to your printer.   A laser toner cartridge is a self contained unit that simply slots into your printer.  When you refill a toner cartridge you don’t touch any working or moving parts you simply make a hole and pour in new toner ink.

Agreed if you pour in hopeless toner then your printing will be rubbish, but would that damage your printer?   Unless you poured in something extremely bizarre I think not.  Buy decent compatible toner from a reputable supplier (and most are as they need you as long term customers) and you’ll be fine.   It’s not rocket science, it’s ink and top quality toner ink will do your printer no harm at all.

But lets take the worse case scenario, my last printer was an expensive Lexmark laser printer which cost me about $240.  The toner cartridge refills where about $400 a set, to refill the cartridges manually  cost about $100.  The economics simply don’t add up the cost of the ink is almost double the cost of the printer anyway, in fact if I blew up every other printer when refilling and bought a new one I’d still be better off.

I’m making that scenario up as of course it’s ludicrous that you could damage your printer unless you poured something pretty strange into your toner cartridge.  Think about it seriously, it’s scandalous how the printer manufacturers are forcing you to buy new or send them back toner cartridges, they could easily be refilled and the environmental impact would be enormous if the printer companies did this themselves.