with everyone trying to make a more conscious effort of going green, i was thinking about how i could recycle my stockpile of epson cartridges. seems like no real options are available to be green here with these cartridges. Petsmart, Staples, or any other vendors won’t accept them.

i decided to go directly to epson. i checked out epson’s recycling program info here. but no where did it state that they take back INK CARTRIDGES. so i go researching the web and found some interesting stuff.

i read about “Epson’s fake school recycling program“…

Epson America Inc. announced on Sept. 14, 2004 that it is burning printer cartridges collected through school recycling programs run by the Funding Factory.

what?! burning? incinerating? this isn’t recycling…

then i read about Tim Jenkin’s experience with Epson and recycling.

Indeed, our collected ink and toner cartridges in the UK are currently being incinerated in a treatment facility that processes our cartridges in order to generate heat which is then recovered and converted into electricity….

um, yea…

i dont understand how you can’t refill the darn cartridges. they were filled in the first place, right?

i came across a story about how Epson was fighting Ecorica Inc. because they started recycling Epson cartridges and was reselling them on the market. Epson was fighting on the terms of copyright infringment but lost the first case and the appeal.

Epson has been battling with an Osaka ink-cartridge recycling company, Ecorica Inc. (not Ink!) since the latter started recycling Epson cartridges commercially.

the cartridges are obviously capable of being refilled and recycled but why isn’t Epson doing anything about it? why aren’t they making the effort to reduce waste and help out with recycling? the fact that they’re fighting someone who has taken the recycle concept and managed to profit from it should be enough evidence that they should push efforts to going greener.

despite the fact that it’s been proven that their cartridges are capable of being refilled, they have made other efforts to go greener. check it out here.

Epson Reducing its Environmental Impact With New Ink Cartridge Packing and Casing

needless to say, i’m disappointed to find out about all of this. i’m a fan of epson’s printers, i have two of them. but if they don’t make more efforts to do something about recycling these cartridges – i might just go elsewhere for my printing needs.