Why We Want Your Empty Printer Cartridges

It is estimated that about 1.1 billion printer cartridges are used up each year. Approximately 70% of used printer cartridges simply get tossed into the trash. In the United States alone, about 8 cartridges are thrown away each second. Experts surmise that a cartridge takes up to a thousand years to biodegrade. Each new cartridge is made using about 3 pints of oil. Only a fraction of the cartridges are recycled; a vast majority end up in landfills.

If these rather scary facts have given you pause for thought, you will readily understand the impetus behind our year long recycling cum fundraising program. Currently only a small portion of cartridges are recycled. Right now recycling helps save about 40,000 metric tons of plastic and metal and we’d like your help in doing more.

All this year we are running an initiative that is in keeping with our core principles – (a) offering our customers eco friendly choices such as remanufactured cartridges to help lower their overall carbon footprint, (b) helping recycle e-waste and preventing having it end up in landfills and (c) fulfilling the corporate social responsibility that we at CompAndSave.com have always held close to our hearts by giving back to the community in any way that we can.

Our year long recycling fundraiser

All this year we are conducting a fundraiser where we invite you to send us your used and empty cartridges. We then dispose of them by handing them over to the GreenHippo.com, an online recycling program that keeps e-waste out of landfills and even pays for it. The proceeds from the cartridges handed over then go to Food for the Poor. This is a nonprofit devoted to feeding millions of hungry people throughout the world and brining about lasting and positive changes to 17 Latin American and Caribbean countries.

Our aim is to raise $3,500 for these dual worthy causes: recycling e waste and helping to improve the lives of the poor and needy. Here’s how it works and how you can be a part of this worthy cause:

How you can be a part of this charity fundraiser

For every 100,000 used cartridges recycled, it is possible to save 9599 kilograms of aluminum, 40 tons of plastic and hundreds of thousands of liters of oil. You can help too:

• Just mail us any used ink and toner cartridges you have or drop them off at this address:

CompAndSave.com Inc. 38929 CHERRY ST NEWARK, CA 94560

• We ship off all the collected cartridges to Green Hippo each month or whenever we collect sufficient quantities (we are already registered with the service and we’ll be sure to share the invoice from Green Hippo with you)
• All the proceeds from our cartridge recycling/fundraiser will go to Food for the Poor to support various programs.

We hope that you will join in this worthy cause by sending us used cartridges in large numbers and by helping spread the word. If you have a question or observation, feel free to send us a query or leave us a comment.