Talking About Green

I seriously don’t like to buy printer ink. Not only is it messy and expensive, the empty cartridges are so harmful to the environment. I usually return them for recycling, but that is a hassle to say the least. Since I have two printers and a copy machine in my home office, I almost always have a little stack of empty ink cartridges in the corner of the room on the floor. Epson ink cartridges are good recycling candidates.

If you are like me, an environmentally conscious tech geek, this probably bothers you too. When I found these artistic “empty ink cartridge sculptures” I was so happy to see something productive being done with these. Ink and Media, a company that sells ink cartridges, asked artist Faith Pearson to create something unique and fun with some of their empties. What she was able to create is way beyond what I would have expected!

Over 2 billion toner cartridges are manufactured around the globe every year. Consequently, its production and disposal significantly contributes to the emission of carbon dioxide into the environment. If we want to offset carbon emissions ensuing from this laser printer consumable, the only effective process is to recycle toner cartridges.

Recycling helps minimize E-garbage Build Up. Only around 10% of toner cartridges produced annually reaches recycling facilities. The bulk of empty cartridges are found in dumpsites and landfills. This pile of junk is not only an eye sore, but will continue to be a problem because it takes thousands of years for cartridges to decompose.

Imagine if our Puritan fathers were already using toner cartridges at the time they entered the new world, the junk left behind would likely still be around. The United States alone dumps at least 200 million toner cartridges each year and the effort must be on the drive to recycle all used cartridges, not just 10% annually.

Recycling reduces use of Fossil Fuels. Remember that for every toner cartridge manufactured, at least 3.5 quarts of oil is used. Multiply the same figure by 2 billion and you’ll get a whooping 7 billion quarts of oil burned annually. Literally, our standard of living is controlled by the cost of oil that has reached untenable proportion; oil being a non-renewable reserve.

Recycling offsets Carbon Dioxide emission. The call to recycle toner cartridges is of great consequence. Everybody must contribute and do his share to minimize his Carbon footprint that consequently translates to reduced CO2 emissions. Every 100 toner cartridges recycled prevents the discharge of roughly 1 cubic meter of CO2 into the atmosphere. So if manufacturing plants continue to produce 2 billion toner cartridges annually, an equivalent 20 million cubic meters of CO2 is pumped into the atmosphere.

Recycling tempers the ill effects of Global Warming. Part of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere dissipates into the ocean or is absorbed by trees and vegetation while the bulk is sustained in the atmosphere, blanketing the earth in the form of greenhouse gasses. Because of the thick blanket of CO2, global temperature increases annually. If not abated, this can cause a variety of problems, from skin cancers to rising sea levels as ice caps melt, affecting low lying countries by way of flooding and landslides. But, the most feared effect of global warming is the disruption of climatic patterns that brings in extra heavy rains and stronger cyclones.

We have to recycle toner cartridges in order to save non-renewable reserves and free the atmosphere of greenhouse gasses. If everybody plays their part, we would definitely help free our landfills of junk and contribute to a healthier environment.

If you look at some of those plastic ink cartridges in your house right now, you can imagine how they would make the perfect art medium. After all, they are colorful, they come in different shapes and sizes, and they seem to fit together relatively easy.  It makes you wonder what other junk we have laying around that could be given a second use, doesn’t it?