Our dustmen in days gone by must have been very strong. Not only were they required to lift big heavy metal dustbins and empty their contents into the cart, but the dustbins were filled with tins, bottles, cardboard, plastics, waste paper and more. Indeed everything which, today, we would all instinctively recycle.
It is hard to imagine that in the lifetime of most of this article's readers we disposed of everything we no longer needed by emptying it into a landfill site. All that packaging, paper, glass and metal that could have been used again was just dropped into a hole and covered with soil. One wonders whether anybody, anywhere gave any thought to what we would do with our waste once the whole surface of the world concealed a layer of landfill and there was just nowhere else to bury it.
Just possibly we could send it into space. Space is a big place, and millions of bottles and cans floating around the hereafter without the influence of gravity would make for an interesting prospect. It would certainly confuse the little green men were it inadvertently to enter the atmosphere of some remote far away planet. But we are digressing just a tad.
The case for recycling is made beyond question. The planet only has a finite amount of any resource and once it has gone it is gone forever. Packaging is costly and that cost has to be passed on from the producer to the customer, reducing the latter's spending power and thereby retarding the market. Everybody, therefore, from consumer to manufacturer, has a vested interest in putting whatever we can back into circulation. Encouraging recycling is a global campaign, the benefits of which are felt by everyone.
The printing industry is no different. Ink cartridges can be recycled for use with both original and compatible products. Some companies will even pay you for empty ink cartridges if they are able to be recycled. Others will give you shopping vouchers or pay money to charity.
The need for this type of positive action is clear. Each year some 350 million ink cartridges are thrown into landfill sites. By 2012 the total number disposed of in this way is expected to have exceeded 1.8 billion. On average cartridges disposed of in this way will take anything between 450 and 1000 years to decompose.
In both the United Kingdom and the United States national or local government programmes have been implemented to encourage the recycling of waste home printer consumables
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