How To Recycle Your Old Printer?

Got an old laser printer or inkjet you don’t use anymore? Instead of disposing your old printer or just letting it accumulate dust in the corner, why not submit it to recycling? Through machine recycling, we help prevent the build up of electronic waste materials, some of them non-biodegradable by nature. Machine recycling is easy and there are no known disadvantages occurring from its practice. Below are a few tips on what you can do to recycle your old printer.

1. Drop your printer at recycling centers or ship it to mail-back programs.

One way to recycle old printer is by bringing it to recycling centers or any bases that offer mail-back programs. Most manufacturers have established their own recycling facilities. Apple, Dell, LG, Panasonic, Sharp, Samsung and Sony are just a few of the known manufacturers that offer free machine recycling. Other OEMs such as Canon, HP and Lexmark also operate recycling centers. You can visit their sites for more details on how to recycle old printers. The United States Postal Office also provides free mail-back envelopes for old printers and other electronic items due for recycling. Retail chains such as Staples and Walgreens also accept empty cartridges on behalf of their affiliated printer manufacturers.

2. Refill your empty cartridges.

It is typical to find a number of discontinued printers occupying attics or storage spaces. Once a printer model is discontinued, the OEM will most likely sustain the distribution of consumables within the expected lifetime of the printer, say 3 to 4 years. Well, if the printer outlives its expected serviceable life and particularly the availability of OEM consumables, you can always turn to the aftermarket for your printer supplies.

Refilling empty cartridges is one way to recycle old printers. For inkjets, you can replace OEM cartridges with remanufactured ink cartridges. The same goes for toner cartridges. You can get remanufactured toner cartridges and toner refill kits even for discontinued printers from online resellers such as Laser Tek Services. You can also bring your empty toner cartridge to refilling centers in your locality. It’s surprising that only a few printer users are in the know that empty toner cartridges can actually be refilled and reused for another 2 to 3 printing cycles.

3. Sell your old printer to remanufacturing companies. There are a number of components under the hood of old printers that can be recycled or reprocessed. Therefore, it’s definitely a great idea to sell old printers to printer cartridge remanufacturing and recycling industries such as 1Source, US Trade World, and AP Global LLC. These facilities will collect, refill and repack used cartridges for resale. This way, you are not only helping promote environmental programs but also get extra cash in exchange for the trade.

Some of us think that an old printer becomes worthless once it has served its last print job. But when you recycle your printer, the act will have a corresponding positive impact to the environment. Let’s take part and help save the Earth.