- Do It Yourself?
- Vendor Mail-in/Exchange Programs
- Third-Party Programs
- What About the Warranty?
Vendor Mail-in/Exchange Programs
Another option is to contact the manufacturer to get a mailer so you can send the cartridge in for recycling. Good for the environment, perhaps, but it won't help you reduce your printing costs. Hopefully, the cartridges actually get recycled—that is, disassembled, shredded, taken to vendors of plastics, etc.—instead of winding up in Chinese landfills or burned in China to recover metals, as described in Karl Schoenberger's article "Where Computers Go To Die." There's no reasonable way to verify what happens to the cartridges you send, and even the vendors themselves may not be certain of what happens to cartridges consigned for recycling. Only a few vendors offer programs for inkjet cartridges. HP and Lexmark include mailers with some cartridges; for others, you can order mailers onsite. Neither Epson nor Canon has a program for recycling inkjet cartridges.