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Aside from the reason that we are running out of landfill spaces, to throw and dump our wastes, we also need to practice recycling for several reasons. There's actually a few more spaces that we can use as waste streams or make landfill sites, but what will happen next if we used them all. Some were even thinking of using their free spaces to build landfill just for the revenues that a site can bring to them. Sooner or later the disposal capacity of our present landfills will become tighter until it reaches its limit, thus pushing us to find another area from where we can dump more wastes.

Recycling doesn't just conserve the materials and resources that we used in order to create new products and consumables, it also helps on saving areas, open fields and spaces from ending up as a dump site. But running a recycling program can be more serious that anyone would have thought. To get all the stuffs that needs to be recycle, of course they need to collect those materials, and how are they supposed to this other than deploy trucks that will get all the returned stuffs. Trucks burned fuel, fuel emits pollution, and pollution is a part of what recycling needs to solve. That's why some recycling programs and services are trying to improve their way of collecting returned materials, or at least make it less frequent. One way or another, they still need to collect those stuffs that needs to be recycle.

Before recycled consumables became popular, people are reprocessing used materials to re-manufacture goods, in order to  create a less expensive version based from the original ones. Now, recycling useful materials connotes to saving the environment. Still people can't help it, making money through recycling. There goes the saying, that there's money in the trash, and that's true. The term recycling, from a business minded man, sounds profit or making money. Given that there are several third party manufacturers popping nowadays, I wonder if by any chance, would it be possible that in the near future, recycled materials will be more dominant than the original ones. That may become possible, thanks to the exorbitant price of branded consumables from big companies.

It's either we became part of the recycling program, or choose to start a new program or service to promote recycling. But don't take it too easy, cause having a recycling plant is just an easy venture. Before, waste materials like plastic, bottles, paper, metals and all other stuffs, are sorted by hands. But now, machines are doing the job of sorting, about 3/4 of all the task are now done by those machines. Just like those recycling plants of printer manufacturing companies, who accept returned cartridges of their own brand, and reprocess to create eco friendly toner cartridges, which are more cost effective for the customers.

Manufacturers with large recycling plant across different countries, uses state of the art facilities to identify and differentiate the components of the material that will undergo recycling. But it totally pays off once the remanufactured toner cartridges and ink cartridges are being patronized by their customers. Not just with printer supplies, since countless products nowadays are being recycled, which sound good, cause it only means that the percentage of saving the environment and all our natural resources increases. Sooner or later, we'll find more recycled consumables in the market than those branded- expensive materials.

 
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Have you ever thought of using coffee grounds as an alternative inks for your printer, whenever it runs of it? This may sound absurd, but believe it or not, after you finish your morning cup of coffee, and you've got a printer like this, you wont get a bag of coffee grounds for nothing. The worlds first printer to ever use "coffee grounds", yes you've heard it right, it uses coffee as ink. The next generation of eco friendly printer, the RITI coffee printer, that needs coffee grounds to use at its ink.

Perfect for your on-the-go printing needs, all you have to do is place the coffee grounds or tea dregs into the RITI printer's ink case. Then move it from left to right to print the image from the printer paper inserted. Remember to wash the ink case thoroughly to avoid any problem after use. What relief could this eco friendly printer brings to the user, by replacing those expensive printer cartridges. Though there's a manual labor required to use this printer, the pleasant scent of your printouts that could tempt you to lick the images or text from your documents is worth enough the labor.

Most of the printer consumables nowadays, are using petroleum-based inks, even though the cartridges were recycled, the ink/toner inside eco-friendly toner cartridges and ink cartridges requires tremendous amount of oil / petroleum. Also, during the production of petroleum-based inks, i produces dangerous chemicals called volatile organic compounds. Having said that, you can now realize how worthy this eco friendly RITI printer can be, if it becomes available in the market. There were said possibilities before, that coffee grounds can be used as biodiesel, that sounds too good to be true, but making it possible would be more beneficial for the environment.

Most printer users are not recycling their used printer cartridges, and a very small number of user are participating on such recycling programs. Every year, more than 200 million of printer cartridges end up in the landfills, and their components like plastic and metal takes hundreds of years before it decompose. Though there were many recycling facilities and recycling plants around the world that reprocess printer consumables and produce remanufactured toner cartridges and ink cartridges, there are still problems left, that needs to be solved, and that's how we can create alternative inks/ toners for our printers. In order to create a more better environment.

 
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For those who have read my previous post about Lexmark's Cartridge Collection Program for recycling, here's the collection service procedure on how you can send those cartridges back to Lexmark. Each recycling centers has their own cartridge returning process and also an individual postal collection service, that guarantees the efficient return of used cartridges to their recycling centers. First thing to remember is that whenever you purchase a replacement cartridge for your printer, always save the packaging's box and wrapper that came in, as you will use it to return your used lexmark toner cartridges.

Now place the used / emptied printer cartridges on the wrapper that came in with your replacement cartridges and seal it, then put it inside the box, the one that also came from the packaging of your replacement cartridge. Next, put a label on the box, that indicates the postal code from where your package will be sent. Address the package to the postal service of their recycling centers provided by Lexmark on their website.

Through this process, and with their several recycling program, Lexmark has recovered and recycled millions of used printer supplies, resulting in the reduction of solid waste that comes from these materials. Recycling programs are definitely a great choice for our environment, and to promote it is what PrintGreen is all about. Always remember to participate on recycling programs or collection programs that are available in your area, there are incentives that you'll receive from doing this things, in may not be in a form that you can spend, but sometimes they do pay for those who participate in their program.

Aside from Lexmark, a few of the leading printer manufacturing companies around the world also have their own recycling collection program. Whatever your manufacturer or brand may be, you can always find your own recycling program that will suit your requirement and needs. Always think of the better ways on which you can help conserve and improve the environment, not only by using eco friendly toner cartridges, cause there's definitely a lot more ways for you to think of.

 
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As a college students, you can't avoid dealing with countless problems during school year, and even after. Stress from all the expenses, like tuition, school materials, and numerous bills from living expenses. Though it's common for most college students to accrue several debts, what's saddening is that after they graduated, several years of their after college life will be spent on finding ways to pay their debt. That's why here are some of the ways and strategies for you to practice, in order to save money during your college years and go green at the same time.

First let's handle the transportation dilemma. For a green conscious student, driving is a waste of money. You'll spend lots of money from paying high cost gasoline to fill up your cars tank, just to drive around the town or head off to school. Not to mention the carbon footprint that you'll left from driving. So instead of spending your money from filling up tanks, try to eliminate the use of car, and practice using alternative ways from which you can get to school without even spending a penny. Cycling routes are now seen on several streets, therefore, why not use a bicycle instead of driving a car, you'll quickly get to class by avoiding traffic routes, you'll have less carbon footprints, and most of all you'll spend no money by riding a bike.

Now let's get to the food you eat. Well this advice can't be impose to everyone, cause not all of us can easily switch to organic and locally grown, farm fresh supplies. If you've been used to eating meat, meat and only meat, then try cutting down or reduce the meat in your daily meals. Meats are most expensive unlike vegetables and other meat alternatives. If you have no problem eating green veggies, then grow your own mini garden, and feed yourself with your own organic harvest. There are cute and simple ways to grow green ornaments and organic vegetables inside your dorm or room, all you need is a small pot / cup, a window for sunlight, and water. You'll not just save some money from removing vegetables on your grocery list, you'll also find a hobby to spend your time on more useful stuffs like gardening.

Don't forget about recycling. Do you know that there are big companies waiting for you to return used stuffs and materials, and you'll even be paid for returning those. That sounds like an income for me, though it may not be big enough to pay for your tuition, well then at least you earn. Several states in the US, offer incentives for their community and for those who actively participate on their recycling programs. If you can't participate cause let's say you don't have the materials to return, then instead of using expensive supplies and materials for your school needs, try using eco friendly school supplies, which are more affordable and budget friendly. When your printing research papers, use eco friendly toner cartridges or ink cartridges depending on your printer type, and save much money. Let's say you're using Lexmark printer, then use Lexmark toner cartridges that are cheaper and eco friendly.

 
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Since printer supplies and consumables specifically the cartridges, became common to use,
it also evolved into a waste contributor on most landfills. To merely explain the facts how it was considered as one of the great waste contributes in the recent years, here's some of the things you should know ;

Annually, over 1 billion of printer cartridges are being purchased, used and thrown away worldwide. Good thing the figure was taken from an annual result, who would like to imagine if it happens for only a month, you can do the math to determine how many printer cartridges are purchased, used and thrown away daily. In the United Kingdom, about 45 million of printer cartridges are being dumped in the landfills annually.

In Britain, about 15 million liters of oil are being used in manufacturing ink cartridges, it was a great relief for them when they started to recycle printer cartridges which save them million liters of oil. Do you know that, an ounce of printer inks, can cost more than the space rocket fuel? An Olympic sized swimming pool will need about 6 millions liters of water to get filled enough, but in Europe, from the last 5 years, they save 6 million liters of oil by recycling 17 million pieces of used printer cartridges. 

These printer consumables are mainly made of plastic materials, ans as we all know it, petroleum based materials are non degradable, and if they're biodegradable, it would probably take thousands of year before they decompose. I think it would be better, if every manufacturer will include on their products packaging the fact that 97% of a printer cartridge components are reusable, just to let their customers know about it.

It was a great thing that more and more printer manufacturing companies as well as third party manufacturers are accepting returned printer cartridges for recycling. There are hundreds of recycling program for us to participate, every country now has their own unique way of recycling materials and consumables. Whatever brand of printer you're using, may it be hp cartridges, brother toners, lexmark toner cartridges, you can always find a recycling program that will suit your needs.

It has been estimated that by the year of 2012, if you sum it up, there will be about 2 billion printer cartridges on our landfill sites. Right now, only a quarter percent of all the printer cartridges around the world are recycled, producing eco friendly toner cartridges and ink cartridges.

All this facts are proofs that we should double our practice of recycling, this implies that if the demand increases, then so as recycling should be.

 
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Recently PrintGreen posted about Lexmark's Recycling Program, which encourages a lot of concern customers and consumers to practice recycling and participate on their reuse and recycling programs. The advocacy of promoting companies and organizations that promotes recycling and reusing is what my blog is nearly all about. As an addition to my blogs list of advocates, businesses and organizations, who promotes green living, eco friendly and recycling, here's the Xerox's Green World Alliance.

"Xerox is committed to environmentally responsible business practices.", this statement was stated on their website. Over the last 20 years, Xerox has been proud that their recycling programs had kept more than 145 million pounds of waste out of the landfills. This are all achieved with the help of their customers and all other consumers, who returned more than 2.5 million xerox laser toner cartridges and ink cartridges annually.

Their customers can return their used and empty genuine Xerox printer cartridges or supplies by choosing the best suited recycling program according to their preferences and needs.If it happens that you have a lot of chunks of items to return, you can also order their free eco boxes, that'll save you more time and can greatly reduce your carbon footprint emissions while shipping. If you dont' have a Xerox printer cartridges, then don't you worry, cause they're now accepting used and empty HP genuine printer cartridges. Although there's a certain list of models that they can only accept for their recycling program, refer on the list below ;

HP Color Laserjet CP2025
HP Color Laserjet CM2320
HP Color Laserjet CP3525
HP Color Laserjet CP4525
HP Laserjet 4250, 4200, 1010

You may choose from their recycling programs, and also you need to generate a single return label or return your printer supplies using the Xerox Eco Box as I've mention, or the Pallet Return Process. Encourage yourself from participating on this kind of recycling and reusing programs, especially now that printer equipments are now a necessity which means, that almost everyone of us, every home has their own personal printer. Purchase only eco friendly toner cartridges and all other printer consumables that are good for the environment.


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Lexmark Cartridge Collection Program
Lexmark International, which has been known for manufacturing quality printer equipment and printer supplies, also supports recycling and protecting the environment. The company encourages their loyal customers who frequently use original Lexmark toner cartridges and ink cartridges, to send them back to lexmark. For the purpose of recycling and reusing empty printer cartridges, to avoid sending them to the landfill. Lexmark's Cartridge Collection Program, encourages every individual, small work groups or even businesses to practice cartridge recycling, and how it can be easy for us to make use of our empty cartridges.

Before you toss your used printer cartridges in the trash bin, consider the bad things that it can bring to the environment, if not properly disposed of, or just dumped into the landfills. The toxins that it can emit to the environment, affecting the people and the community that surrounds to the infected area. So instead of having this issues, and experience a more huge problem when it adds up to the numerous causes of global warming, why not recycle those printer cartridges. You'll be amaze of how great you are by recycling your used toner and ink cartridges, and create an eco friendly toner cartridges and ink cartridges for your printer equipment.

In fact from a Life Cycle Assessment commissioned by Lexmark international, found that sending back your empty or used printer cartridges which should be made by Lexmark, instead of letting them get dumped on local waste streams, can significantly decreases the carbon footprint of that cartridge by almost 60%. That's why the company collects thousands and millions of empty and used Lexmark printer cartridges for their Cartridge Collection Program, and recycle those printer cartridges for reuse. Lexmark's program of remanufacturing and reusing, both greatly contributes for the betterment of the environment.

Conserving raw materials, and avoiding additional emissions from manufacturing new printer cartridges, this are all achieved by recycling printer consumables which became a great contributor of waste in the past recent years. All these leading recycling programs from all concerned printer manufacturing companies are such great advocacies to consider, and need to be well promoted globally.

 
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I found this great invention by Chinese designers Chengzhu Ruan, Yuanyuan Liu, Xinwei Yuan and Chao Chen, called the P&P Office Waste Processor. It's a device that can create a pencil made out of waste papers. If you're always in need of this drawing material, then this device will definitely astound you. Aside from being amazing, this waste processor device also help in the environment, by gobbling up waste papers from your offices or schools, and transform it into a cool pencil made out of paper. Of course you still need a graphite, the idea is to tightly wrap the material into the graphite stick, and put some glue to make it done.

This device can provide a great help mostly to school establishments and offices, since these two establishments are often in need of this writing material. Users just simply need to feed the device with their old papers or wasted printouts from their offices and let the device do the magic of turning it into a minty fresh paper wrapped pencil. With its clear cover, anyone is allow to see and watch how this device can turn your wasted materials into a very useful stuff. Just wait till the device spit out the pencil on the hole located at the side part of the device.

The P&P Office Waste processor is also capable of sharpening your pencil before it spit out the material, you can even use it as a sharpener for pencils that are non-made by this device. It's very useful, portable,cool and eco friendly, which makes me think of buying one if ever it gets out of the market. As of now, this wonderful device is not yet available in the market, and i wonder if it would ever be available soon. Nature friendly people would probably love to match those paper pencil with their recycled paper products, as well as with eco friendly toner cartridges that creates green printouts that are helpful for the environment.



 
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Choosing the right equipment for your home, offices and business could be a hard task, especially if you greatly consider being eco friendly and you think the environment should always matter. There are numerous equipments and machines that are now remodeled or rather redesign, and reproduce to become eco friendly, some are now using biodegradable materials. So whenever their products reaches its maximum life expectancy, the components can be decompose and brings no harm to the environment. Even printer manufacturers have gone through the idea of reducing the ozone emission of their products.

If you think you need to make a switch and decided to buy a new printer that is more eco friendly, then try using some of these tips to hep you pick up the right equipment for your need.

Know first if the brand of printer you'll be purchasing accepts returning of printer cartridges once empty or used, this way you won't get any problem on how will you pile up, store or throw away your empty printer cartridges. Printer manufacturing companies including HP, Dell, Canon and Lexmark are those who gladly accept returned cartridges, while Xerox and Konica can be more convenient since they accept printer recycling for free, only of their brand. Epson also accepts printer recycling but for  a certain cost.

Printer models with a duplexer can definitely bring you savings, by cutting your printers demand for paper use into half. Also consider printer models that don't easily get jammed when using recycled papers, cause as we all know, recycled paper materials are lightweight and thin which make it delicate to use.

Ask for features or modes that lets you save ink or toners, although there are available eco friendly toner cartridges and ink cartridges, it's better to have a printer with a mode that can lessen the use of ink / toner whenever you print.

Always check the printer for Energy Star logo, this indicates that the model of that particular printer will conserve much energy as compared to other printer model without this logo.

Lastly, practice green printing, you may not have an eco friendly printer, but you can still do a lot of ways to make your everyday printing more eco-friendly, you can also use remanufactured toner cartridges for your printer which gives you more savings instead of purchasing branded printer cartridges. 

 
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Eco-Friendly PC IAmEco
Imagine you own a personal computer that emits a carbon footprint of 70 percent less than the common computers around. For eco friendly minded PC users, this could be a great wonder, especially for PrintGreen. Computer nowadays are engineered with non renewable materials, components that can't be decomposed and are difficult to recycle. Top it up with their huge power consumption, causing more carbon footprints to released.

A Company in Ireland the MicroPro, collaborated with Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and MicroIntegration IZM located in Berlin, to engineer and wooden-frame computer focusing to reduce a computer's environmental impacts. Introducing the first of its class, and one of a kind computer the "IAMECO" ( I-Am-Eco ), awarded by the European Union for EU Ecolabel . The eco friendly, environmental inspired, touch screen Personal Computer IAmEco, is indeed out of the ordinary. It has a very low energy consumption, with 70% less carbon footprint as compared to a typical PC nowadays, and it's made out of wood. About 98% of all the materials and components used in constructing this awesome wooden-frame computer can be recycled.

A typical PC requires fans for cooling to avoid overheat, but the IAmEco being an extra ordinary, needs no fans at all, heatsinks provide the ventilation and replaces the role of fans. These heatsinks contain heat pipes that convey the heat from the processor via copper tubes. In terms of energy efficiency, since fans are out of the design, less power consumption is attained, plus LEDs illuminate the screen of this PC which improves the energy efficiency by up to 40%.

The IAmEco was also designed for a more improved dissasembly process, whenever it crash or users encounter a problem with the unit. Which brings more ease for the user to repair and maintain this unit for longer period of time. Users wouldn't have to worry of how they will get rid of their unit if in case it reaches its life span limit. Improve and efficient power consumption, eco friendly and exquisitely design structure, wooden-frame and less audible, what more can a personal computer savvy could ask for.

To top it up, you can use eco friendly printers with this eco-PC, to have a more environment friendly experience with this cool technology. There are printer consumables that are made for the betterment of our environment, like eco friendly toner cartridges and ink cartridges. These recycled printer consumables are made from empty original cartridges returned by users, thus creating remanufactured toner cartridges which are more environment friendly.


    Author

    Fiel Mori Promotes Eco Friendly stuffs and creating environment friendly articles for everyone @PrintGreen



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