Company Announces Ink Cartridge Recycling Index – The most popular videos are here

Here is a great article that explains the benefits of using remanufactured ink cartridges.

What Are Remanufactured Ink Cartridges?

These cartridges, sometimes called “recycled ink cartridges”, are used cartridges that have gone through a multi-step process that culminates with their being recharged with fresh printers ink.

When you purchase a remanufactured ink cartridge from a reputable dealer, initially it will be cleaned thoroughly. Then it’s filled with high quality printer ink. After being filled its internal pressure is checked. Only then is it inspected for potential leaks.

Once these cartridges have passed these regimens they are tested to ensure that they function optimally.

If the cartridge passes all its tests and meets all the necessary standards it is considered to be a remanufactured ink cartridge and is offered for sale.

A properly remanufactured cartridge that has been through these rigorous tests will not adversely affect your ink jet printer. It will work as well, and some say even better, than an original equipment manufacturer cartridge. That’s because the quality of printers ink used to refill it can even be of a higher standard.

What Are the Benefits of Using Remanufactured Ink Cartridges?

There are a couple of major benefits for using a remanufactured cartridges instead of an OEM cartridge.

1. Your most obvious benefit is that it will save you a lot of money. Recycled cartridges cost considerably less than original equipment manufacturer cartridges. You can actually save 50% or more when you purchase these cartridges.

If you or your company does a lot of printing this can amount to very significant savings over the course of time. Your print quality should not suffer because most remanufacturers guarantee superior quality.

2. The next benefit may seem altruistic, but it is undeniable that using remanufactured cartridges is ecologically sound. Unfortunately, every year countless millions of ink cartridges are dumped into landfills. Residual ink can leak out of these cartridge and cause pollution.

Also, since these cartridges are primarily made of plastic and metal, they will not degrade. They will take up space in landfills for perhaps generations to come. And, depending on where you live, available space for landfills has either been overtaxed and / or is unavailable.

Buying remanufactured ink cartridges is a win-win situation for you, your company, and the environment.

So, now you know the benefits? Would you consider buying remanufactured ink cartridges?

That’s why we created the Carbon Neutronics Index. It’s a proprietary software program that we share with those who purchase and use grenk products. It helps customers calculate the tonnage they’re keeping out of landfills by choosing grenk.

Far too many businesses don’t get the credit they deserve for their exo-initiative. The Carbon Neutronics Index makes it easy to track and record the effect one company can make in reducing landfill waste and keeping cartridges in circulation for reuse.

It’s also a great tool for comparing the cost difference of using remanufactured grenk cartridges over original manufacturer print cartridges, and can provide measurable case studies to help customers build support for other environmental initiatives while improving their bottom line.

Carbon Neutronics™ is made up of three words: Carbon + Neutral + Electronics. CNI makes it easy to track and record the effect one company can make in reducing landfill waste and keeping cartridges in circulation for reuse. The Carbon Neutronics™ Index was created to provide companies with an accurate account of their potential e-waste that has been diverted by using grenk™ products.

When it comes to living green, there’s a lot more to it than just recycling. A Metro company built their business on that 16 years ago, but they’re still looking for ways to improve the environment today.

InkCycle takes used toner and inkjet cartridges and rebuilds them.

“We take them and put them through a real extensive process,” explains InkCycle’s President and Chief Executive Servant Rick Krska. “We then clean them and refill them, repackage them, and deliver them back through resellers to customers.”

The company has come a long way since 1992 when Krska started with one clear mission — to keep electronic clutter out of our landfills.

“We were kind of green before green was cool,” Krska laughs.

The process starts by opening the cartridge. The foam insert is then removed and discarded. The cartridge is then flushed out with water removing the ink residue inside.

InkCycle added another green incentive to this process in recent years. They run that inky water through a water treatment facility, where an electro coagulation process cleans it of any impurities.

Senior Project Engineering Manager Rob Rayburn explains: “We basically take anything that’s in the water that’s bad; make it settle out like mud.”

Once the cartridges are cleaned and ready, they are sent to the production line for the next step.

“We reinstall the foam in the cartridge, that’s your method of retaining the ink,” Rayburn explains. “We put a new cap on the cartridge. That’s to seal the cartridge up. And start the functionality of venting, then the next thing we’ll do is fill the cartridge with ink.”

To insure their cartridges meet or exceed standards — each and every cartridge is tested before it is packaged. With 114 different cartridges — that means more than 5,000 test printers scattered around the production lines.

“We know people don’t buy printers to have them smudge, smear and sprinkle down the page,” Krska says. “So our orientation has always been to have them perform as close to the OEM, sometimes better.”

InkCycle added another green initiative recently called Grenk — a zero landfill program. Any toner cartridges that can’t be recycled are reused in the form of energy by a metro concrete producer.

Krska explains: “And what they do is, what we do together is grind up this… used to be a toner cartridge. And now its shredded plastic and it becomes fuel for this concrete plant to cook their concrete.”

With Grenk, InkCycle also issues the companies an environmental impact report, outlining just how much electronic waste they’ve kept out of the environment, and how much it’s saved the client.

Print Cartridges Get New Life
For InkCycle, a remanufacturer of toner and print cartridges, one could argue that it is inherently green in that it reuses spent cartridges that might otherwise end up in a landfill. That’s certainly true, at least in part, says Brad Roderick, executive vice president. “At the end of the day, we are rebuilding on somebody else’s trash.” He points out, however, that even remanufactured products at some point reach the end of their usable life.

InkCycle, an ink and toner cartridge remanufacturer, has instituted measures to reduce the amount of waste it generates, including implementing a water filtration process for wastewater.

InkCycle’s waste-reduction effort is part of an overall business model that aims to be sustainable. For example, the company is converting its gasoline-powered automotive fleet to hybrid vehicles; pursues a “print less, save the planet” internal campaign; and it has changed many of its manufacturing operations from five shorter days to four longer days to reduce energy usage. On the toner cartridge side, the company has found ways to modify the manufacturing process to reuse the original components a greater number of times. Environmentally friendlier, for sure, but also a cost savings, Roderick notes.

The financial side of sustainability is something Roderick emphasizes. For sustainability to have long-term momentum, “it has to be based on financial considerations,” he says. Introducing more efficient climate control systems that also lower operational expenses over the long term, for example, fit the bill.

The company’s waste-reduction efforts include an on-site wastewater treatment facility to treat the huge amounts of water and steam needed to thoroughly clean and prepare used inkjet cartridges for remanufacturing. It was introduced both because InkCycle “wanted to make sure we were doing the right thing” and as a defensive strategy, Roderick says. He notes that while the company was easily meeting environmental guidelines prior to the treatment facility, legislation could change and rewrite those rules. InkCycle wanted to be ahead of any new regulations.

The wastewater treatment process used by InkCycle is called electrocoagulation. Describing it in simple terms, Roderick says that as wastewater passes through the treatment system, chemicals and solid materials are “shocked” out of the system using electricity and chemistry, with the sediment falling to the bottom of a holding tank. The sludge goes to an EPA-licensed disposal site, while some of the treated water then can be reused in the cleaning process of the used inkjet cartridges.

InkCycle recently introduced a new product line called Grenk, which the company says extends its efforts to reduce, reuse and recycle products that might otherwise end up in landfills. The company has developed a new use for Grenk’s plastic cartridge housings once they have reached the end of their reusable life. It’s as fuel, but not for InkCycle. Instead the company worked with LaFarge North America and its subsidiary Systech Environmental Corp. to turn those plastic housings into fuel for the production of cement.

These Torit filters are made from 100% recycled General Motors filters and paint.
“What they need in the production of cement is a lot of heat. The way they generate that is typically through the burning of fossil fuels, so [they want] material that is of high BTU value,” Roderick says. Given the petroleum-based nature of plastic, InkCycle’s Grenk cartridges proved to be a viable candidate to help the cement furnaces offset some of the fossil fuel needs. The cartridges are disassembled and shredded before they are used as fuel.

The entire Grenk production and packaging process has been developed with environmental sustainability in mind, as well. Indeed, InkCycle says the packaging boxes are made from the highest available content of recycled material and are chain-of-custody certified. Shredded paper in the boxes are the test prints run from each cartridge before they ship. Additional measures help assure that no part of the Grenk product line need end up in a landfill. Of course, a little customer participation is required. “But we make it very easy for them to return [used cartridges].”

InkCycle is quick to admit that attracting new customers is a big driver behind its introduction of Grenk, even as it pursues a sustainable business model. Roderick explains that not only are there thousands of companies that remanufacture printer cartridges, making it a commodity purchase, but also many companies are resistant to even contemplating the purchase of aftermarket products. “But when we learn they have an environmental initiative, it’s one call to the person in charge of their environmental initiative and… there’s almost a 100% opportunity rate of going in and talking to those companies about the green side and the financial side of [remanufactured cartridges].”

InkCycle calculates it has kept 225 tons of waste materials out of landfills through its reuse and recycling efforts in the past year.

Click here for the full article.

Boxes are made from the highest available content of recycled material and are chain-of-custody certified.

No tape! A proprietary pad and re-usable clips eliminate the need for tape.

Storage bags are made from a new oxygen-degradable polyethylene film that begins degrading in months instead of hundreds of years like standard bags.

Storage clips are returned for reuse or recycling.

Air pillows not only protect our cartridges, they reduce the amount of plastic we use.

We test-print every cartridge before we ship it. Those test sheets are then shredded and reused to fill the storage bags.

All components that aren’t reusable are placed into a best-practices recycling stream. Nothing is thrown away.

Blades, gears and OPC Drums are reconditioned and reused whenever possible.

It’s one thing to recycle a print cartridge. InkCycle’s been doing that since 1992. But with grenk, we recycled the entire process, finding new ways to make our cartridges-and our entire business-more eco-friendly and sustainable.