"The recyclers' dilemma: plastic landfills help the terrorists, but there's cash in empty printer cartridges" Pt. 1

You've known for some time that this day was coming. Three weeks ago, the solid areas in your designs started getting "streaky" and the warning light on your printer began to blink on-and-off at unpredictable intervals.

Then, two weeks ago, every instance of the word "android" in your reports printed out so faintly it could barely be read. You began to suspect that you were running low on toner, but—hoping to stave off the inevitable—you followed the conventional wisdom as pertaining to a low printer cartridge: removing it from the printer and shaking it first up and down, then side to side, forcefully rotating it on its axis, shaking it in front of you like a plastic maraca.

You set your printer's color preferences, first to blue, then when that ran out, to red, because the black was pretty much useless by then, the print so faint as if viewed through layers of wax paper.

Finally, yesterday, the last remaining blot of toner gave up and surrendered to its destiny as the dot on an i in your report on the metaphysical implications of phlogiston, and reluctantly admitted to yourself that the end had finally arrived: Farewell, old friend. You've given me nearly 10,000 pages of scribbles and prose, but its time open the old Brother MFC-9420cn color laser and replace your used-up giblets.

You don't mind removing and replacing the old cartridges with new ones. In fact, it appealed to the left-brain-mechanical-tinkerer side of your personality, and, well, the crispness, the beauty, the rejuvenation of your print-outs would be reward by itself.

Nor was it the cost of the replacements: you'd followed the advice you'd discovered on SuppliesExperts.com's blog, and had stocked up months before. At those prices, who could blame you? And, even if you hadn't stocked up, the cost of gas it would take to drive to the office supplies store wouldn't have been a factor: SuppliesExperts.com has free shipping.

None of these had kept you up at night. Getting new cartridges wasn't the problem—The problem was getting rid of the old ones

***

Here's where I abandon the sui-distant second-person point of view in favor of my normal omniscient one and get down to business. The age-old question of what to do with manufactured non-biodegradable castoffs is one that has been exacerbated since the beginning of the computer age: Computers, CRTs, even printers contain a soup of toxic substances, including dioxin, PCBs, mercury, chromium, radioactive isotopes, and other unhealthy ingredients guaranteed to ruin one's dining. These must all be disposed of carefully and conscientiously.

So, throwing used-up toner cartridges out with Wednesday's leftovers is a pretty poor option. As is allowing them to pile up in your backyard: Nobody wants a toxic dump next door. Traditional landfills lack the technology to deal with such poisonous debris, and, New Jersey is just about full up, anyway.

A far better option is to recycle the things, cycling the being inorganic equivalent of reincarnation in Buddhism. There are several reasons why this is a superior solution, some of which I noted previously here and here. Simply put, they are:

1. Three and a half quarts of oil go into the manufacture of each and every printer cartridge. Why support Iran or Nigeria? Both are members of OPEC and neither is a particular friend of the U.S. Iran has been accused of being part of the Axis of you-know-what, while Nigeria is, of course, home and birthplace of the notorious 419 scams that have bilked American out of several millions of dollars--as well as a good portion of their self-respect. 'Nuff said.
   
   
2. The cartridge shells can be re-used, sometimes several times, thus relieving upward pressure on oil reserves (see above), and reducing the pressure on New Jersey to annex parts of Delaware.
   
   
3. Cartridges that have been recycled save you (Yes, I'm talking to you, Mister!) a considerable amount of money, as the reincarnated cartridges—such as many of those sold by SuppliesExperts.com—are much, much less expensive than brand-new ones.
   
   
4. Finally, you can sometimes even make money for yourself or charity by recycling used toner cartridges.

Thus, in addition to helping fight the War on Terrorism by refusing to support our oil-rich enemies, saving Delaware from having to change its state motto from "Liberty and independence" to "Liberty and prosperity," and saving untold dollars in your budget, you might possibly even turn a profit on the things.

Now, that's what my late mother would call a mitzvah, and what my ex-wife would probably call "good karma."

***

"My, that young man sure can run on, cain't he?"

***

In Part 2 of this blog, I'll discuss some of the ways to properly dispose of used toner cartridges—both for fun (and good karma) and for profit.

As always, if anybody's reading this and cares to comment, please do so.

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