What to do with old ink cartridges?

February 26, 2007 – 11:25 am

There are millions and millions of ink cartridges being used in the Uk every year, and 90% end up on a landfill site. Which is a complete waste as they are actually worth quite a bit of cash to the right buyer.

If you have an Hewlett Packard, Canon or Lexmark printer all their printer cartridges can be recycled, unfortunatly you can’t recycle Epson, so stop reading this now.

So what can I do with them?

The most profitable place to go to sell you old cartridges is Ebay, as long as your cartridges are ‘virgin’ (have not been refilled before) then you can get anything between £1 - £3 per cartridge depending on what type it is. Do a a completed listings search to see what similar cartridges have been selling for and don’t sell for less.

Tesco have their own ink cartridge recylcing scheme, you receive 50 clubcard points for each ink cartridge you donate plus 50p goes to charity. Remember that 50 clubcard points are worth 4x as much in deals so essentially you are getting £2 per ink cartridge.

Update** Tesco have now increased the amount they give per ink cartridge to 100 green clubcard points, essentially meaning you are getting £4 per ink catridge. You can order free envelopes to post them off to Tesco by calling - 0800 0910 696. For more info on greenclubcard points click here

If you are just a nice person and don’t really need the money then there are plent of charities that will gladly take them off you.

http://www.helptheaged.org.uk/en-gb/HowYouCanHelp/Recycling
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what_you_can_do/recycle/toner.htm

So why are people buying them anyway?

Companies are buying them for a nominal amount, refilling them and selling them on for £10, this is what Tesco does with their own brand ink, so does Jettec and all the other own brand inks in the market.

So why not see if you have any old ones lying about, or if you work in an office start an ink recycling scheme.