Epson Ink Cartridges – The Journey of Print
Japan is home of innovative technology, but a story investigating the use of print cartridges in the country highlights the importance of opting for ink cartridges such as Epson that are easy to recycle.
The success of recycling is down in many ways to how easy it is to fit in to everyday life . If it costs time, money or too much effort to do, people will not do it. And one area where printing companies like Epson are making leaps and bounds is in the area of recycling ink cartridges. A report from Japan reveals however that there is still a long way to go in changing the habits of some offices across the world .
Stephan Schmidt reported on the ‘journey of an ink cartridge’ after discovering that the Japanese alone consume 200 million ink cartridges – in 2008, just 10% of those ink cartridges were recycled. The sad fact is , that despite the prospect of a paper-less office, many businesses rely on printed out letters, labels and reports in instances where an email just won’t suffice. Epson ink cartridges that aren’t recycled will be dumped or incinerated . And Schmidt reports that the UK are not beyond reproach with around 65 million ink cartridges sold every year, with just 15% of those being recycled.
Epson Leads the Recycling Revolution
But big ink manufacturers including Epson are making positive steps to try and promote consumers to opt for recycling. In Japan, Epson ink cartridges are a leading brand with the Seiko Epson Corporation employing around 10,000 people in the city of Suwa. Epson teamed up with five other printing businesses in Japan to create the Ink Cartridge Homecoming Project. The project’s aim was to make recycling Epson ink cartridges accessible and straightforward by dropping off white recycling boxes in almost 4,000 branches of post offices across Japan.
Think About Your Ink
As well as Epson ink cartridges, the innovative scheme incorporated HP ink cartridges along with cartridges from, Dell, Brother, Lexmark and Canon. The used ink cartridges are then transferred to a specialist Epson plant where they are sorted and recycled – the cost of which is shared by the print manufacturers involved in the recycling partnership.
Not only is Epson helping to make a greener planet, the recycling project has generated over a hundred jobs and the company’s employment policy encourages the disabled to work at the facility as part of the organisation’s dedication to social responsibility in the community. The Epson ink cartridges are sorted and prepared for recycling and the company clearly takes pride in thinking through a detailed approach to its environmental and social responsibility. It’s a scheme that Epson and its partners hope to roll out to other countries – and one of the reasons why, aside from high quality print – it’s worthwhile in making Epson ink cartridges the cartridge of choice for your business .
