Recycle inkjet cartridges: can we recycle better?

Donating to a charity is not something that many of us do on a regular basis. Sure, there are tax benefits in the United States to doing so, but it’s hard to find extra money to donate. A great way to donate a little without having to take money out of your already thin wallet is to recycle the things you already have and maybe throw away, like the cartridges for your printer. There are many places where you can recycle inkjet cartridges for free or even get a small discount on future cartridge purchases, but it’s just as easy to donate them to a charity.

Recycle 4 Charity is a California based organization that will gladly accept your empty cartridges and donate the proceeds to a charity of your choice. Like many other organizations, they will provide you with prepaid shipping materials and you can ship as many cartridges as you like. You can choose to donate the cartridges, in which 10% of your gross proceeds will be donated to charities, or receive a refund of money that you can use for whatever you want, including donating to a charity yourself. Depending on the cartridge, they will pay between $ 0.10 and $ 3.00 for each, although most appear to be $ 0.20 or $ 0.45. That doesn’t sound like much, but if you were to throw away the cartridges or recycle them for free, at least that little bit is helping someone, right? The company also offers various recycling boxes, sachets, and bins that you can install in your school, church, or workplace and perhaps get more people involved in recycling and donating.

Companies like Staples also have programs that will donate proceeds from inkjet cartridge recycling to certain charities. Staples, for example, will donate $ 3.00 for each eligible inkjet cartridge to local schools through a program called Recycle for Education. You can donate your own cartridges or go the extra mile and start a full donation drive in your school, workplace, church, and community. At $ 3.00 per cartridge, if you can get your community involved, the school of your choice will get plenty of extra money to use for events, supplies, or to fund other programs. You can visit Recycle for Education to learn about eligible cartridges and to register.

If you live in the UK, there are a variety of organizations that will accept empty cartridges and resell them to the manufacturer and the procedure will go to charities. Among them are Homeless International, Recycling Appeal, and ActionAid Recycling. There are similar programs in the United States, such as freecycling.org, that will donate 100% of the proceeds to a local organization of your choice. They have a list of organizations in many states that will directly benefit from recycling inkjet cartridges.