Cartridge remanufacturing revisited

Without delving into the controversial issues on OEM vs. third party cartridge remanufacturing, I would like to talk about this recent InfoTrends report.

We know that both OEMs and third party remanufacturers are trying to collect depleted printer supplies: manufacturers want to recycle the products to meet environmental goals and block competition for brand-new cartridges, and third party suppliers want to refill and resell the cartridges. Makes sense, right? But in reality they don't take actions in line with their objectives. This research reports that less than half of all printer cartridges are recycled or reused even once by offices in the U.K. and U.S. Moreover, it seems that even the remanufacturer companies do not recycle the unusable cartridges simply because they have little resale value.

Some other data: Only half of Europe's remanufactured laser cartridges and 30% of remanufactured inkjet cartridges are recycled, and US is a slow follower with 10% of lasers and almost no inkjets recycled. Remanufacturing of cartridges is claimed to be able to reduce the demand for new cartridges by about 20%. When it comes to competition between OEM vs. third party in collection, remanufacturers collect 70% more empty toner cartridges and 700% more empty inkjet cartridges than the original manufacturers do.

Good news: although these news are not very good, remanufacturers say "in fact they would like to do more recycling, but they lack recycling systems" !!!

10 Green Giants

Last April Fortune issued a feature on ten companies that "have gone beyond what the law requires to operate in an environmentally responsible way." These companies went the extra mile by reducing waste, recycling waste, designing environmentally friendly products, reducing their energy consumption etc...

Please read about these companies and what they do to be more environmentally responsible here. Here is another article that looks into one of ten green giants, HP, in depth.

Oce sustainability report

A lot of companies issue sustainability reports nowadays. Aside from their role in corporate citizenship, these reports are also a good source for recent remanufacturing data of the related companies. It is a good thing to see companies take initiatives for sustainability other than changing light bulbs, or constructing energy efficient buildings (although these things no doubt required). This was also on my mind when I watched "The Inconvenient Truth", and got extremely disappointed by the limited scope and lack of emphasis on the responsibilities of businesses. Writing letters to your representatives is not the only thing you can do, and it will never be. It is consumers, politicians (like Al Gore once was) and leaders in research/industry pressuring companies to take action in remanufacturing/reuse activities by convincing them that ecology can be sustained in a economical manner.

In addition to Cat's sustainability report I posted last week, please see recently issued sustainability report for Oce here.