Do you know that toner powder used in toner cartridges is made of oil and the actual volume required to produce 1 pound of toner is 2 liters? Now you do. Currently America consumes over 100 million cartridges per year. That equates to 100 million pounds or 50,000 tons of oil.

In an effort to reduce this tremendous amount of nature’s raw materials, PRC Technologies, a division of Print Recovery Concepts Inc., announced a real environmental breakthrough. PRC has developed a way to make toner powder out of soybeans.

PRC reports the new cartridges will carry SoyPrint brand label and be available for the most popular laser printers at prices comparable to brand name versions. Soy ink has been available for some time, but this is the first soy toner cartridge for laser printers.

According to PRC, the company has been extensively testing new toner for months for the print quality and number of pages per cartridge to match brand name versions. The company says soy toner is absolutely harmless to the printers.

More information is available on http://www.soyprint.net/.

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Products seem to be delivered to the consumer in ever more packaging these days. And the consumer is forced to pay for it in the end — not just environmentally but financially as well. Tax dollars go to pay to reuse or recycle excess packaging — or to truck it to a landfill site.

In European Union countries an appropriate law came into force which makes overpackaging illegal. As part of the Europe-wide rules on packaging, packaging must now be manufactured so that “its volume and weight is limited to the minimum adequate amount to maintain the necessary level of safety, hygiene and acceptance of the packed product for the consumer.”

In Germany, for example, you can see a distinct difference in the way products are packaged. The same products you can buy in the United States are available there with less packaging, less-toxic or non-toxic components and more recyclability because manufacturers must comply with federal laws that require them to design their products for the environment, not the dump.

Historically, the United States hasn’t been big on that kind of federal legislation. This is the land where the consumer is king or queen, so it’s up to us to make this kind of change happen.

One-third of American garbage is packaging materials, according to the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington.

And there’s not necessarily a good reason for it. Many companies are simply following convention and haven’t looked into better ways to package their products.

Not only is minimal packaging better for the environment, it also costs less to produce. Companies can save a lot of money when they reduce packaging.

Printer cartridges add to the problem of overpackaging, too. This picture speaks for itself:

The small grey object you can see in the middle of the picture is an ink cartridge, most of the rest of the stuff you see is waste. The cartridge comes in a small sealed plastic pouch, which is in a box with various papers. This is then packaged in an entirely unnecessary plastic container which is virtually impossible to open.

This is one thing.

Another thing is that when you buy ink and toner cartridges online, seller often add styrofoam packing peanuts or other filler to prevent possible damage of cartridge in parcel. Taking into account that a toner cartridge box usually already contains protective filler (for instance, HP toner cartridge is surrounded by an air-filled safety “jacket” in box), it even increases overpackaging and, eventually, lanfill.

More important is that these styrofoam packing peanuts cost you additional money.

However there are some advices to reduce packaging waste, be more ecologically consious and also save some movey:

• Avoid snacks and other foods wrapped in individual serving sizes. Instead, buy bigger bags of the snacks and put smaller servings in paper bags.
• Buy personal hygiene and home-cleaning products in bulk when possible.
• Buy cereal in bags instead of boxes, which usually contain bags inside.
• Buy loose fruits and vegetables instead of those packaged in Styrofoam trays and shrink-wrap. Fix your own fresh-fruit cups instead of buying cut-up fruit in plastic containers.
• Avoid buying products packaged in blister packs (molded plastic attached to cardboard.) Although sometimes blister packs serve a hygienic purpose (making sure cosmetics or medicines aren’t tampered with, for instance), they are often unnecessary.
• Use fewer individual serving-size bottles of water and juices.
• Buy ink and toner cartridge at Toner Cartridge Depot.

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HP earlier this week announced breakthroughs in printer ink, printer toner, and media technologies that allow customers to get color printing quality comparable to offset printing.

The list of the HP’s breakouts includes:

• ColorSphere Toner
• Dual Drop Volume Technology
• Enhanced ‘Low Melt’ Monochrome Toner
• ColorLok Media
• XL Inkjet Print Cartridges
• Simple Black range of cartridges
• Dual Pack LaserJet Cartridges

Now let us see what is what and who is who. (more…)

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Previously we have established that original HP ink cartridges have at least 2 levels of protection: genuine labels and “best before” dates. How about the toner cartridges?

Monochrome laser is the most common printing technology for offices. According to HP, replacement of a toner cartridges renews 2/3 of the whole printing mechanism. So it’s worth making sure the cartridge you buy is not a freud.

For demonstration purposes we used HP Q2612A and C7115T toner cartridges. Here are several signs to tell you the cartridge you hold is a genuine HP toner cartridge:

• specific location of the hologram label
• air-proof package of the cartridge inside the box
• protective tape in cartridge
• production codes on the cartidge casing and on the box

(more…)

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When your printer is out of ink, the problem of replacement cartridges arises. Today’s printer ink market offers you original, compatible, remanufactured, refilled, etc. cartridges to replenish your stock of ink. Every option has its pros and cons, but if you choose to buy original cartridges, make sure the quality you get is worth the money.

Remember, the cartridges are responsible for 90% of the printouts quality regardless the type of printing – matrix, inkjet or laser.

The thing is, along with original cartridges (produced by a company for own printers) and compatible cartridge (produced or remanufactured by third-party companies) there are counterfeit cartridges produced by some backstreet companies in conditions far from those on a factory.

Counterfeit cartridges are one of the most hazardous types of consumables as they affect both customers and manufacturers. Many people confuse counterfeit cartridges with compatible ones. That makes them think there’s no difference between original and compatible cartridges, but this is one.

From this article you will learn how to identify the original HP cartridges. (more…)

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The chances are, you, just like me, have an inkjet printer at home. The chances are you use the printer occasionally to print several pages of text or a bunch of photos. The chances are next time you going to use the printer, it won’t work for the printhead are clogged.

Of course, the best way to get rid of clogged jets is to prevent them. Some say you should print regularly (daily/weekly or else), some would advise you to get a laser printer instead. But when you’ve already got this problem, how to troubleshoot the cloged printer?

There is a way to bring your inkjet printer back to life.

The essence of problem with clogged printhead is that ink dries inside the printhead jets, letting no liquid ink from cartridge tank to go out. Given that, the essence of unclogging a printhead lies in dissolving that dried ink.

There are arguments about what is the best solvent to clean inkjet heads. People naming this or that solvent are both right and wrong. The thing is there no best solvent, there is one that dissolves the particular type of ink.

Understanding printer ink

Before we start, there is something to know about printer inks. In one of previous posts I cited one good article titled “Debunking the Myths of Digital Inks” by Tony Martin. If somehow you have not read the article yet, I will brief you on it.

In general, in any printer using water based inks, whether they are dye, pigment or hybrid colorants, they tend to have similar formulations.

They use mainly water, a colorant or mixture of colorants, dye, or pigment or both, a wetting agent like glycerin that allows the liquid to flow and allow the ink to enter the paper surface, a product to slow down drying on the heads like glycol, and often an alcohol to speed drying on the paper surface. Some inks with pigments require an adhesive to attach the particles to the paper surface, so they use a resin, usually acrylic.

This all gives us the idea of what reagents to use for dissolution (at least I strongly hope it does.)

Selecting a solvent

How would one know what exact solvent is suitable for his or her case? That’s pretty easy to figure out.

Usually there’s decent amounts of ink spilled everywhere in these situations. Instead of risking your potentially expensive heads, try your various solvents on dried ink outside of printing head. If you don’t already have spills to clean up, then intentionally make one. Let it dry and then clean it up… with “whatever” you’re contemplating running through the printer.

If it doesn’t work outside the printer, neither will it unclog the head from inside. If it dissolves the ink, then you have a much better chance of success.

A troubleshooting advice

To help you dissolve dried ink in printhead, here is a receipt that should work on the majority of water based inkjet printer inks.

The mixture uses either ammoniated window cleaner (which uses glycol, alcohol, water and ammonia) with extra isopropyl alcohol, or in places where ammoniated window cleaner isn’t available, use ammonia mixed to about 1% concentration, and adding the isopropyl.

However, there are some inks that use different technologies and may not work with these solvents.

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Hewlett-Packard is boosting its effort to effectively recycle used inkjet printer cartridges, Wednesday introducing a new process that manufactures new cartridges from recycled cartridges that are separated and rebuilt from scratch.

The “closed loop” process gives used HP inkjet cartridges a sustainable end-of-life value and puts the material back to good use while being environmentally friendly.

The process first breaks down plastic in printer cartridges made of PET (polyethylene terephthalate), after which additives including fibers and resins are used to strengthen and regenerate the plastic. The remolded plastic is then used to manufacture new HP inkjet cartridges.

The plastics or cartridges are not melted, refilled, resold or sent to a landfill, HP said. The process also applies to other products, like PET water bottles.

The process, which went into pilot in 2005, has already resulted in HP manufacturing 200 million printer cartridges. The process will go into full manufacturing now.

Each inkjet cartridge contains 70 percent to 100 percent recycled material. Users will find the process beneficial as cartridges with new material perform better than used or refilled cartridges.

HP allows users to return inkjet cartridges worldwide for free in most cases through its recycling program, said Ken Fleming, marketing director of supplies for HP. In some cases, a postage-paid return envelope is provided by HP with the inkjet print cartridge box.

The process will apply only to HP cartridges, the company said. No external inkjet cartridge brand is being put through the new recycling process.

Before the implementation of the new process, not all plastic recovered went into making new cartridges. They were used by others to manufacture products including auto parts and toys.

The inkjet cartridge recycling initiative is the latest in HP’s broad effort to be environmentally friendly. HP recently announced that it would implement more energy-efficient technologies across its PC lines to reduce computer energy use by 25 percent in 2010.

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