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Think Food: What To Do With Old Printer Cartridges

May 13, 2008

image Yesterday afternoon Travis asked me if I knew of a place where we could take our used printer cartridges for recycling. At the time I couldn’t think of anywhere, so I put my handy dandy google search skillz to work, and came across an interesting program called thINK FOOD.

The mission of the thINK FOOD / Phones-for-Food project is to alleviate hunger and divert waste from landfill sites by raising funds for local food banks through the process of recycling used printer cartridges and cell phones.

Local food banks benefit and harmful waste is diverted from the garbage everytime someone recycles their used inkjet cartridge or cell phone. Simply find a drop-off location near you or set up a collection site in your workplace or school.

When a collection box is full, it is sent to a central location where the cartridges and phones are sorted and sold to the remanufacturing industry. This industry turns them into refurbished products for consumers. Funds are raised for the local food banks through this process.

There is an extensive list of drop off locations in the Vancouver area, as well as all over Canada. Something else I noted while viewing the list of locations: Rogers Wireless has been a national sponsor of the program since 2004 and set up the project in their stores to accept old cell phones. Maybe Rogers isn’t the devil after all…? :D

Posted by Rachael Ashe at 9:22 AM

Comments

Sounds like a great initiative. At our charity we aim to recycle or pt anything unwanted to further use. Our local government is pretty supportive of this smile

By Adult Ühler from UK on Jun 19, 2008

Great stuff.I have an old HP printer that uses 45 ml containers and won’t ever replace it until it breaks because modern printers only hold 23 ml per container but sell at 75% the old cartridge cost.
To really save money, just get a bulk feed system, and print from tanks. There are lost of sources of these for most printer models.More recycled content and less packaging materials mean lower cartridge prices, right? Didn’t think so.

By Premium Clear Redwood Racking on Mar 19, 2009

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