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Toner and ink cartridges

Printing, copying and faxing are common activities in the office environment.

A major consumable from this activity is toner or ink cartridges. This has environmental implications for resource efficiency, toxic materials and waste generation.

Users of toner and ink cartridges who wish to help reduce these impacts can choose to take the actions recommended below.

Recommended actions

Refer to ecolabels

Prefer products with an Environmental Choice New Zealand licence (EC–30–05 Toner cartridges) or other third-party audited life cycle ecolabel, or can show that they meet similar criteria.

Other examples: Good Environmental Choice (Australia), Nordic Swan, EU Flower or Blue Angel (Europe), EcoMark (Japan).

EMS labels such as ISO 14001, EMAS, or EnviroMark are not equivalent, as they do not demonstrate impact reduction.

Buy recycled

Prefer remanufactured cartridges with a performance guarantee, or new cartridges containing post-consumer recycled content.

See below for the benefits of recycling and remanufactured cartridges

Maximise resource efficiency

Reduce your demand for printing by, for example:

  • using electronic versions instead of paper copies
  • setting fonts and margins to improve the efficiency of printing.

Reduce waste to landfill

Send your used toner cartridges to a recycling programme. (Take-back systems are offered through the major office supply companies as well as some office equipment suppliers.)

Prefer packaging which has recycled content and is recyclable.

Organisations that choose to implement the recommended actions also contribute to other core sustainability principles, as follows.

Energy efficiency

Choosing life cycle ecolabelled products and/or remanufactured or recycled content cartridges supports energy efficiency.

Reduce toxics

Choosing life cycle ecolabelled products ensures toxic components in toner and other ingredients is minimised.

Benefits of recycling and remanufactured cartridges

Recycled.Recycling and remanufacturing toner cartridges helps to reduce a number of environmental impacts at once. They:

  • divert plastic and metal waste from landfill
  • help support a viable market for materials recycling
  • reduce resource extraction and manufacturing-related impacts
  • reduce net energy use and contribution to climate change.

For many laser printer models, when you replace the toner cartridge you are replacing the whole print engine, which is very wasteful without some form of remanufacturing or recycling.

Life cycle analysis data is limited, but when good-quality guaranteed performance remanufactured cartridges are compared with original cartridges net benefits for energy and materials use are shown.

The Ministry for the Environment recommends that remanufactured cartridges with guaranteed performance be sought. The Ministry has purchased such cartridges and found them to be as problem-free as original cartridges, and of significantly lower cost. If any problem with the printing equipment can be shown to have arisen from using a guaranteed remanufactured cartridge, then the cartridge remanufacturer addresses the situation under their warranty. Damage that cannot be shown to have been caused by using remanufactured cartridges remains subject to the original equipment warranty.

Last updated: 1 July 2009