The closure of Office Max stores throughout New Zealand reduces the options for recycling ink cartridges. It is still possible to drop your empty ink cartridges into Warehouse Stationery and Paper Plus stores throughout New Zealand. This will reduce the waste going to landfill and allow the recovery of some of the materials used in the ink cartridges. Warehouse Stationery has some FAQs on recycling ink cartridges https://www.warehousestationery.co.nz/ink-toner-recycle-faq . Paper Plus also has some info on their Facebook Page
Compatible or Remanufactured Ink Cartridges
At Affordable Ink most of our product is new compatible ink cartridges. Recycling ink cartridges is not something we specialise in. Despite this some of our product does use an original shell which is remanufactured to an as new condition. Machining out the inside of the cartridge allows our manufacturer to include more ink when they remanufacture the cartridges.
In the photos above it is possible to see the internal walls in the cartridges. This allows the genuine manufacturer to fill just the small box with ink, even though the cartridge will hold more than this small amount. When recycling an ink cartridge the internal walls are removed. This allows our manufacturer to fill the ink cartridge to full size. This is why we only supply high capacity XL cartridges which print 2 – 3 times as much as the genuine standard cartridges.
Covid-19 Impact on Recycling
In addition to Officemax stores closing in NZ Covid-19 has had an impact on recycling ink cartridges. It is now more difficult for the empty cartridges to find their way back to China for recycling. Collecting, sorting and shipping have all been disrupted by the Covid-19 virus. Prior to the epidemic China banned the shipment of waste to China. This meant ink cartridges must be sorted prior to shipment and licenses for importing empty cartridges are tightly controlled. Despite this there is still some recycling occurring. All of this helps to reduce the environmental impact of using ink cartridges when printing.