Change the Margins

Recycling Printers

I'm using myself as a case study. I'm about to replace my printer and decided to put my money where my Margins are and see how easy/hard it is to find a way to environmentally dispose of it. If the printer was even close to working, I'd donate it to a charity or school, but the thing is dead dead dead. It's an NEC 870 monochrome laser printer which has been fantastic for me. I've had it for at least 6 or 7 years, and it finally conked out about 3 months ago.

It's easy to find places to dispose of ink cartridges and cell phones in an environmentally responsible way; entire printers (especially outdated ones) are another matter. My first google attempt: "environmentally dispose of printer" led me to the eCycling page of the EPA, which turns out to have a very useful page listing  local, manufacturer and retail recycling programs.

Since my printer's a NEC machine, I figured I'd check out their Total Trade program first. When I put in my printer model, it turns out to not have any after market value. Not a surprise. They CAN recycle it for me, but I'll have to pay them a fee to do so. Here's the damage:

It's not a ton o'money, but if I can find a cheaper (aka free) way to recycle the printer, that would be ideal. I'll keep you posted on progress.

For reference:
EPA page: http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/hazwaste/recycle/ecycling/donate.htm

USPS Free Recycling Program

Just heard about a great new program the US Postal Service is trying out called “Mail Back” that lets you recycle anything from iPods to old printer cartridges to PDAs. You just pick up a postage paid envelope from any of the 1500 participating post offices around the country, stuff your old Blackberry or digital camera inside and send it on its way. The Mail Back program is kicking off in 10 cities to start, including Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles and San Diego.

Postage for your goodies is paid for by Clover Technologies Group, a company that recycles, remanufactures and remarkets printer cartridges and small electronics. Clover beat out 19 other companies to win the contract with the Post Office and has a “zero waste to landfill” policy – it does everything it can to avoid contributing any materials to the nation’s landfills. Click here for more on their recycling policies.

One thing to note – you don’t have to BE in one of the 10 chosen cities to take advantage of the program. Envelopes can be MAILED from anywhere - they’re just only AVAILABLE in the 10 participating cities for now. So if you don’t happen to live in one, get a friend who does to pop one in the mail for you. The $1.00 or so you’ll spend in postage to get the envelope is a small price to pay for keeping the planet healthier.

Full press release from USPS: Click here

Friday EyeCandy: Carbon Footprint

As I continue to work on this campaign and find more and more interesting things along the way, I'm going to try to post something visual on Fridays. After all, I'm sure you're enjoying my scintillating prose, but there's only so much one can write about paper margins to keep y'all interested.

By now recycling cans is a no-brainer, but just in case you're ever tempted to toss that can into the regular garbage...

To see a "making of" video for the piece: http://www.jellyfishpictures.co.uk/projects/carbonfootprint.mov