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National Tree Day Planet Ark Home
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More FAQs Here are some questions that are often asked about 'Cartridges 4 Planet Ark'. You can click a particular question to jump down the page to the answer. Q: If some of the materials in cartridges are potentially hazardous, are they really safe to use? Q: Isn’t reuse better than recycling, being higher on the waste hierarchy? Q: Shouldn’t the companies that make printer products be responsible for the waste that they create?
Council recycling collections pick up and separate certain packaging types, such as glass bottles and jars, aluminium cans, milk and juice cartons, etc. Each item collected is made up of a single recyclable material, allowing easy separation into basic material types. In the case of cartridges and other more complex products, they are a complicated structure involving a number of different materials. These products have to be manually pulled apart before they can be separated into their component materials. Therefore they aren’t suited to the collection systems and sorting facilities used by councils. There is also a small risk of ink contaminating the other materials collected for recycling.
Q: If some of the materials in cartridges are potentially hazardous, are they really safe to use? Toner (containing carbon black) and coloured toner (containing heavy metals such as cadmium) are used to provide colour or pigment in some (but not all) cartridges. These pigments are safely contained within the cartridge. A user will not come into direct contact with these materials in the normal use of their cartridge. Hence the use of cartridges is safe. These materials only become an environmental health risk when they are no longer contained – either through the deliberate opening of the cartridge in a waste processing program or through the breakdown of their casings due to exposure in landfill.
Q: Isn’t reuse better than recycling, being higher on the waste hierarchy? The waste hierarchy places different approaches to managing waste in the order reduce (1), reuse (2), recycle (3), energy recovery (4), and landfill (5). Landfill is the least desirable outcome, particularly where the waste is potentially hazardous in landfill as it is for cartridges. The entire cartridge waste stream must be considered when evaluating any cartridge reuse, recycling or remanufacturing program. Prior to ‘Cartridges 4 Planet Ark’ around 15% of cartridges were reused largely through 3rd party remanufacturing, leaving 85% going to landfill. In many cases, there was no solution for toner bottles, photocopier drums and thermal ribbons and most reuse waste ended up in landfill. ‘Cartridges 4 Planet Ark’ was launched to capture the forgotten 85% of cartridges that people were putting in rubbish bins. There is a remanufacturing and component recovery process in the ‘Cartridges 4 Planet Ark’ program – over 50% of laser cartridges donated to us are processed in this way. What isn’t remanufactured or reused is recycled with zero waste going to landfill from our Close The Loop recycling process. To date, this Planet Ark program has succeeded in diverting millions of printer cartridges from Australia’s landfills.
ISO, The International Organization for Standardization, develops standards to ensure consistent design, manufacturing, engineering and other product and service standards for the global marketplace. Both ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 can apply to the manufacturing and/or recycling of printer consumables, such as printer cartridges. ISO 9001 is a quality standard – meaning that the accredited product is of a certain minimum performance standard and that it will do the job for which you bought it. However, ISO 9000 standards DO NOT measure any environmental impacts, standards or indicators. ISO 14001 is a standard for "environmental management" – meaning that the organisation in question has systems that minimize harmful effects on the environment caused by its activities. Close The Loop®, Planet Ark’s resource recovery partner is currently ISO 9001 certified and is in the (long and involved) process of 14001 certification - it expects to achieve 14001 status by the end of 2006. More info: http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/iso9000-14000/understand/index_one.html ACRA (Australasian Cartridge Remanufacturers Association) is an industry association for 3rd party cartridge remanufacturers. Membership is voluntary and when members sign up they agree to abide by ACRA’s Code of Practice and Code of Ethics. However, membership does not require independent environmental auditing and none of their members are required to have ISO 9001 or 14001 status. Planet Ark would like to see this changed by ACRA as it could help to better manage and minimise the environmental impact of the cartridge refilling industry.
Q: Shouldn’t the companies that make printer products be responsible for the waste that they create? Absolutely! That is why Australia’s leading cartridge manufacturers are involved in the ‘Cartridges 4 Planet Ark’ program and pay for its running costs. Under Extended Producer Responsibility principles, each producer has to foot the bill for the environmental impacts of their own products. ‘Cartridges 4 Planet Ark’ enables cartridge manufacturers to ensure that the waste produced by their products is reused or recycled under sound environmental conditions. It allows the various cartridge manufacturers to come together under one umbrella and support a single program so that members of the public can easily recycle all of their cartridges without having to check the brand or model before putting them into the recycling bins. To date, this approach has enabled Planet Ark to remanufacture or recycle millions of printer cartridges.
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