We all know that it’s important to recycle old printer cartridges, but knowing where to go to and what to do once your printer ink and toner cartridges are empty is an entirely different matter.

There’s a multitude of options available for you when you want to recycle your cartridges. Very often, the easiest option is to go straight to the manufacturer. Or you can find one of the many companies in South Africa that specialise in recycling used printer cartridges.

For original printer cartridges

If you’re a small or medium sized business, you can sign up with HP’s Planet Partner’s programme to return your used original HP toner cartridges and HP ink cartridges to them. Postage is free and you can arrange a collection online, making it convenient. They also have a bulk collection programme in place for enterprises and the public sector. Unfortunately, there are no options available as yet for individual or private consumer collections.

Lexmark offers a return programme on all their original printer cartridges. It’s fairly easy to use as well. All you have to do is register on their site and they will send you a bag that you can place your used Lexmark ink cartridges in to send back to them. Recycling toner cartridges is a little bit more complicated as they only do bulk collections.

You can recycle your Samsung toner cartridges through the Samsung Take-Back and Recycle (STAR) programme. You can also sign up for Brother’s Go Green campaign to recycle your old Brother toner and ink cartridges.

Epson also has a recycling programme available and you can find out how to recycle your Epson ink cartridges and toner cartridges by contacting your nearest Epson reseller. You can also recycle your Canon ink cartridges and toner cartridges via their recycling programme.

For remanufactured printer cartridges

Green Office offers a collection service for a variety of electronic products, including printer ink and toner cartridges. They collect and recycle used originals as well as a selection of remanufactured cartridges. Contact them to get the list of cartridges they recycle as well as their price list for collections.