Get Your School Involved In Recycling Ink Cartridges
By Denise Resendez
“If you want parents to recycle, just tell their kids the importance of recycling, and they’ll be all over it.” - Bill Nye
Reuse. Reduce. Recycle. We’ll often find these words on the front of a little green bin urging us to recycle. Often it’ll be paper, cardboard boxes, water bottles and other similar items. What people often forget about though, is that their printer’s cartridges can also be recycled! While you can’t just through it the bin, you can send off your empty ink and toner cartridges to local recycling centers or online shops like GreenHippo.com.
That’s why we are glad to announce our ink and toner recycling program. All proceeds go to support the non-profit, Food For the Poor after we send off the cartridges to GreenHippo.com. No matter if its through your home printer or even school’s printer. With the Back-to-School season in full swing, it would be a great idea to get schools and classmates involved. Here’s how below:
Some Recycling Facts First
By choosing to recycle, we are choosing to make a difference. Reusing items prevents landfills from overflowing and reduces the negative effects of waste incineration. We can optimize our resources and cut back on pollution by recycling. Plus, recycling has great personal and community benefits!
Recycling initiatives at the community level, have a dual positive impact. They involve more people and increase the total volume of recycled items. These initiatives serve to increase overall awareness about the importance of recycling and practically educate people about to recycle. Such initiatives could result in recycling becoming almost a habit with people of the community – a norm rather than an exception!
If you recycle already, you may have known that already. Here are some other recycling facts:
- Each of us generates about 4 pounds of trash in a day (that’s 1.5 tons of garbage a year)
- It is estimated that about 75% of that waste is recyclable, but only 30% of it actually gets recycled.
- The United States generates 21.5 million tons of food waste, most of which is not composted. If that waste were composted, it could contribute to lowering greenhouse gases around the amount of 2 million cars.
- Approximately 9,000 community curbside recycling programs exist in the United States
About Our Food for the Poor Program
Regular readers already know about our ongoing recycling program to support Food for the Poor. If you’re new, our program helps the hungry by recycling used ink and toner cartridges. Via this program you have been mailing us your empty printer ink and toner cartridges which we collect together and send GreenHippo.com, who pays for these cartridges. In turn, the money we collect from this recycling program goes to FoodForThePoor.org, a nonprofit devoted to feeding the hungry.
How to Recycle Printer Cartridges in Your School
As a student you can help to mobilize the student body to do something positive for the environment by sending their ink and toner cartridges to CompAndSave.com. You would need to clear this with the school authorities or custodial staff. You could explain the dual benefit of helping the school reduce disposal costs of toner and ink cartridges and of helping the needy via the program. Involve not just the students, but also the administrative and teaching staff of the school in the program. Hey, if maybe even parents might want to get involved!
You just have to collect the empty printer cartridges and mail them to us at:
CompAndSave
Attn: Cartridge Donations
38929 Cherry St.
Newark, California 94560
We’ll make sure that the toner and ink cartridges you send us are sent off GreenHippo.com. From there, they pay us and we send 100% of the proceeds to Food For the Poor.
When you initiate a recycling program in your school or college, we would love to hear all about it. Do share on our Facebookpage or in the comments section below.