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Ask Slashdot: What To Do With Empty Toner Cartridges?
New submitter MoarSauce123 writes: Over time I accumulated a number of empty toner cartridges for a Brother laser printer. Initially, I wanted to take a local office supply chain store up on their offer to give me store credit for the returned cartridge. For that credit to be issued I would have to sign up for their store card providing a bunch of personal information. The credit is so lousy that after the deduction from the sales price of a new toner cartridge the price is still much higher than from a large online retailer. And the credit only applies to one new cartridge, so I cannot keep collecting the credit and then get a cartridge 'for free' at some point.
I also looked into a local store of a toner refill chain. Their prices are a bit better, but the closest store is about half an hour away with rather odd business hours. Still, at the end they charge more than the large online retailer asks for a brand new cartridge. For now I bring the empty cartridges to the big office supply store and tell them that I do not want their dumb store credit. I rather have big corp make some bucks on me than throw these things in the trash and have it go to a landfill. Are there any better options? Anything from donating it to charity to refilling myself is of interest.
I also looked into a local store of a toner refill chain. Their prices are a bit better, but the closest store is about half an hour away with rather odd business hours. Still, at the end they charge more than the large online retailer asks for a brand new cartridge. For now I bring the empty cartridges to the big office supply store and tell them that I do not want their dumb store credit. I rather have big corp make some bucks on me than throw these things in the trash and have it go to a landfill. Are there any better options? Anything from donating it to charity to refilling myself is of interest.
How about hiding them behind an icon?
At the bottom of the
Seriously, just Google it: brother toner cartridge recycling program
There is very little you can do with it. The stuff is carcinogenic, dangerous and mostly plastic. In some states it's illegal to just dump them in the general waste.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
http://www.ebay.com/bhp/empty-toner-cartridges
For most Brother cartridges you can find refill kits for a fraction of what even generic toner carts with poor reviews cost. I've had good luck with mine, though you WILL want to buy new end caps as they get damaged enough when you remove them that they will almost always leak toner which makes a mess and ruins prints.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Available all over the place, a toner refill kit gives you a bottle of toner, a soldering iron with a circular cut-out tool attached and some stickers. Cut a hole in the cartridge, fill it with ink, stick a sticker over the hole and throw it back into your printer. Works for me.
We have a couple of Brother laser printers in the house .. one's just a printer, the other is the same laser printer base with a scanner/fax/photocopier thing on the top. The both use the same cartridge.
The problem is that a new toner cartridge costs as much as a new printer, which comes with a toner cartridge. It's almost not cost effective to replace the cartridge.
Every time we need a new cartridge my wife wants to recycle the printer and buy a new one.
The idea of that makes me cringe, but I can't defend that it costs less to buy the toner cartridge attached to a printer.
I don't know what to tell you to do. If the choice is jump through ridiculous hoops, pay extra, or say to hell with it and bin the cartridges ... I'm afraid chucking them in the garbage is the easiest choice.
If they're going to make it impossible to recycle the toner cartridges, people might give up on trying.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I would argue that a slashdot article with question is one way to "go check online", one may learn things that do not appear in the first couple dozen ines of a google search.
Many communities are hosting "recycling" events that not only take electronics but also printer cartridges, for example. My town has those in late spring and summer. I don't see that in first few pages of google search.
You should have died a few thousand years ago, with the rest of Neanderthals.
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The recycling building at my local dump has a bin specifically for spent toner cartridges right next to the one for dead UPS batteries.
I did that when the laser drum went out on my eight-year-old Brother printer. A new printer was cheaper than buying a replacement laser drum. The new printer was not only faster than the old printer, I could print from my iPad over the wireless via Air Print.
Although you can make a bong from an old toner cartridge, it's probably not a good idea.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Use the empty toner cartridges.
Call Goodwill and other charities that specialize in job-training. Some of them may do printer-cartridge-recycling in-house and would love to have your recyclable cartridges.
Others charities may not do it in-house but they may have buyers lined up to buy cartridges in bulk and will take your donated cartridges.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Bludgeon Dice employees to death with them.
Seriously who ever screwed up the front page so it all renders on the left all of a sudden needs to be clubbed over the head a few times.
Time to offend someone
I bought a laser cutting machine, put it on low, and just burn the text onto the paper. No cartridges to return or refill ever. I currently use solar panels for power, but I don't like the 80% inefficiency, so I am looking into using a lens and fiberoptics to use the light directly. This way I can also incorporate a prism and do color printing.
What are your printing so much of and, more importantly, why are you printing it?
We are half way done with 2015. I can't remember the last time I had to have something printed.
Wait, do you work for the US Bureau of Printing and Engraving?
would you even consider to throw these into normal trash. Here in Germany, that would get you fined - (almost) empty laser printer cartridges are nearly on the same level of nastiness as old engine oil.
On the other hand, if you do not find a commercial recycling program you like (every toner manufacturer and seller on the German market has to take back its empty cartridges at zero cost, and of course we also have companies which specialize in refills and pay a few dimes for used cartridges), every communal recycling center accepts toner cartridges free of charge. And in case they'd manage to make some bucks of them, it goes into the city budget. No need for charity shopping.
Wait until you have a bag full of them. Leave them on the curb near an art school. let someone turn them into a performance piece.
"Eagles may soar, but weasels dont get sucked into jet engines."
FF provides prepaid shipping labels: just tape a few boxes together, slap a label on it, and call UPS.
The school district has garnered more than $10k over the years, which is pretty awesome for them.
Yes, I work in a paperless office, so of course we do a LOT of printing ;-)
Do what I do with all my empty 3D printer filament spools: Hide them under your credenza.
Use the empty toner cartridges.
Doh! And I thought you needed a toner refill kit. Who knew?
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Have gnu, will travel.
Go to the hardware store. Get some 2x4s, 2x2s and a whole lot of elastic rubber tubing. Make a really big slingshot. Shoot them at an angle where they go over your neighbors houses and land a few streets down. The houses in between will block the recipients view of the source.
Stop printing so much.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
I have a laser printer....this is why I asked the question in the first place!
Might be little to you...and I did use startpage to look for solutions, but came up empty. Sorry that I wasted your time although you seem to have plenty for writing a useless and nasty reply.
The credit is not large enough compared to the place selling brand new cartridges without asking me about my underwear size. The issue is that their credit is no deal because the base price is insane.
This is from private use...and yes, I do have bigger issues to deal with, but given the many dumb responses here I wonder by now if asking on slashdot was not a colossal mistake. C'mon folks, do you really have to be so mean when someone asks a simple question?
I will ask around, thanks for the suggestion.
In the same bag as the puppies?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I don't know how you function in what I presume is USA but here in Poland in small to mid sized companies nobody would even consider buying general purpose office printer without knowing that there are cheap substitute toners aviable for that model. I work in small company and we only buy printers for which we can get cheap toners. And the price difference is like 1/2 (!). Right now we go only with Lexmark and annually we do a market research to emerge the cheapest company to supply us with substitute toners. Once we have a contract with such company they are more than willing to take old toner cases from us. And they also do all the paperwork for us to give us receipts of old toners recovery since it is required by law to have such. I don't know anybody who was controlled about this but it is illegal here tu just dump the e-waste in thrash - you ought to have a receipt for every piece of electronics/e-waste you dispose (and also you need it for fiscal reasons).
So I am a bit shocked reading about your toner accumulation policy and your urge to throw them away into trash. :)
Sorry, but if society wanted you to recycle toner cartridges, it'd be easy, or at least take a reasonable effort, to do so. When it takes more than a reasonable effort to recycle, it's trash. (With a caveat, enumerated below.)
I still change my own oil. And I take the old oil to any Autozone (there's one only a few blocks away) and they recycle for free. The same for car batteries. That's the way it should work.
One question, though: If you did not expect remuneration, that is, if you just took a bunch of toner cartridges to them and said "please take them", would they? If so, then do that and stop complaining about it. There's no way brick-and-mortar stores can compete with online, so any reasonable discount they give for a returned cartridge (which doesn't have a lot of value) will still not compete with online. That's a fact of life. To me, it'd be enough just to get the cartridges out of my life.
Here in Oregon, we have a thing that's still known as "the bottle bill" (although it's long since been law). Great idea, STUPID implementation. The machines have to read the bar code in order to give you your deposit back, which means you can't crush them ahead of time to save space, and you have to feed them into the stupid machine one........ at....... a........ time..... (There is usually one "bin" sorter but it's big and complicated and usually out of order.)
And so, it being a time consuming hassle to return the empties, for a long while I just accepted deposit as an additional tax and threw them away. Screw you Bottle Bill.
But later, I came up with a better solution. I bag them and when I have three or four 55 gallon trash bags full, I go by the local grocery on the way to work, find someone obediently putting their cans in one at a time, and say hey... would you like these? No, thank you! And they're Out Of My House, which (this is the important part) is the whole point. And who knows, I might have made some homeless person's day.
So, if it's too far away or if they make you jump through too many hoops to get rid of your toner cartridges, consider the trash can. But if you're holding out for a better discount, you're kinda missing the point. Man up and donate the damned things and be done with them.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
So when the question was so stupid, why bother with a dumb response? Besides that, more than half of the commenters actually provided some helpful advice. Seems they did not have a problem with the question.
You can always check out http://www.tonerbuyer.com/myli...
They have okay prices and they pay the shipping.
I've been trying to refill my toner cartridge with your hosts file, and I can't quite mange it. Can you help me out?
You need to spend more time on it. For every hour of ad-free toner cartridge you need to spend 3 weeks updating your host file - or just download the latest updated host file from APKs ad revenue financed web site. The download is currently 500MB (and you need to update every hours - those advertisers keep changing the address of your toner).
I'm perplexed by your problem. Every toner cartridge I have ever bought, both OEM and off-brand clones, have been shipped with prepaid return labels to ship the spent cartridge back to be recycled. The off-brand clones really want them since they're going to refurbish and refill them, anyway.
The solution? Find a better toner supplier.
Kriston
I had disappointing results using third-party toners in my HP Color LaserJet 400, so I use only HP to eras now, although I do troll for bargains and lightly used cartridges to save money. I save up several cartridges and then use the UPS label in one of the new-in-box toners to ship them all back to HP under their recycling program. It's just not worth it to me to use refilled cartridges that may be prone to leaking. I've been a laser printer user for well over 20 years, and a certified HP LaserJet technician; I had friends in the refill business that put out good product, but a lot of the refills you get online are just more Chinese crap. If you can find a local source that cares about quality, then go for it; they may also buy your empties. You could also try listing them on Craigslist.
Nothing to see here but us trolls...move along...
C'mon folks, do you really have to be so mean when someone asks a simple question?
MoarSauce123, meet The Public. The Public, meet MoarSauce123. I hope your new relationship is pleasurable for both of you.
Heh, all of the entertainer, movie stars, etc have known this about the public. They are mean, rude, evil, etc. Just relax, what you are seeing is perfectly normal. Read the responses in a week or so and you will see some good stuff too. The moderation system helps make the good stuff more visible.
With your UserID, I can see why you might be surprised. Hang around for a while. The crowd here is generally better than most places... but it is still, The Public. ;)
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
You should just remove 'ask slashdot' from your feed 'cos pretty much every possible question can be answered better by Google than it can be by slashdot. Alternatively if you're genuinely interested in what other geeks have to say about a particular subject and not just so you can write pompous remarks to people trying to start a discussion, stick around.
But the hosts file toner refill prints fewer adds, so you can print 10,000% MORE pages with the same toner. Totally worth 3 weeks.
Human Rights, Article 12: Freedom from Interference with Privacy, Family, Home and Correspondence
But the hosts file toner refill prints fewer adds, so you can print 10,000% MORE pages with the same toner. Totally worth 3 weeks.
That's your opinion - and I don't doubt you deserve to hold it. But for me - I don't want no steenking black and white ads.
This would have been an OK thing to ask 10 years ago here. But these days, Slashdot is chock full of assholes, shills, right-wing extremists, and just trash in general. Very few worthwhile people are left here any more.
I have two Brother Laser printers. I usually buy genuine Brother refills from Amazon. They come with a postage-paid return sticker. I just put the old item in the box the new one came in, attached the sticker and drop off at Post Office. There is a sticker for UPS also.
Pigskin-Referee
Linux: Yesterday's technology, tomorrow
Agree totally. a lot of tinfoil hats on here today.
If you actually take any big manufacturer legitimate toner cartridge to pieces you will find the mechanical components have a very high quality and quite a high manufacturing cost. I suspect they test the mechanism, and if ok then - refill the cartridge, reset the chips, and sell the thing back as new.. if not ok then they dissemble and recycle the materials and components. Either way recycling is hugely profitable. Why wouldn't any company do it?
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
You don't have to use the store credit to buy more toner cartridges, at least not if you're talking about Staples. You can instead use it to buy stuff that is discounted, which can be a good value. For example, I have bought a few Logitech M325 mice there for $10 each during the Christmas season sales.
You have got to be kidding, you couldn't find HazMat info on toner cartridges ?
No wonder you're anon.
I wonder how much more you could print when you install ad block plus to your printer.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Find a 100,000,000 pound counterweight, fit it to a trebuchet, and fling your cartridge into the sun my friend. Problem solved!
I wonder if a 100 million pound weight is actually heavy enough to get the cartridge to escape velocity and into the sun's inexorable gravitational pull. It probably isn't. Oh well.
What's the normal lifetime for printers these decades?
I still haven't opened the second bottle from the refill kit. Does this stuff have a shelf life, and if so, why?
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