Halve the carbon footprint of laser printer cartridges
Polar bears have large footprints, but emit only small amounts of carbon
CO2 /2
If you use our products, you'll halve your carbon footprint compared with using a newly manufactured laser printer toner cartridge. The rest of this page is a substantiation of that claim based on 3 verifiable studies.
We're going to say that again ..... cuts carbon by half .... a full 50%
Unless a male wants to mate with you, walruses are inoffensive and live mainly on a diet of shellfish
Imagine how pleased Greta Thunberg and everyone else would be if there was a way to cut the planet's greenhouse gases by half. We'd be ice-dancing in the streets, wouldn't we?
Now imagine that this new low-carbon technology only costs half of what it used to. In the case of refilling your own laser printer cartridge, that incredible low-carbon future is already here ... half the carbon at half the price.
Carbon Footprints and Ecodesign of Toner
In this 2008 study, Dr. Gell calculates a 52% reduction in carbon footprint by refilling a toner cartridge 3 times and replacing the OPC drum once.
Commercial exploitation minus the blood.A bearded seal on an ice floe is watched by a zodiac boat full of eco-tourists in Svalbard
In our opinion, the "do-it-yourself" refill case is even more favourable because the following carbon loads included in Dr. Gell's assumptions don't apply:
- manufacture of replacement OPC drum
- transport of replacement OPC drum
- triple transport of empty cartridge to and from remanufacturing facility
- energy consumed during remanufacturing at facility
In addition, the footprint of the
delivery transport is smaller because the toner powder involved weighs only a fraction of a whole cartridge.
Source: "Carbon Footprints and Ecodesign of Toner Printer Cartridges", Xanfeon Energy & Environmental Services, UK, 2008
Centre For Remanufacturing & Reuse
The authors conclude that, based on their data, a remanufactured black toner cartridge has a "46% lower
carbon footprint than a corresponding new cartridge".
Source:
"The Carbon Footprint of
Remanufactured Versus New Mono-toner Printer Cartridges", Centre For Remanufacturing & Reuse (commissioning body)
The arctic hare, a tough customer, neither hibernates nor lives in burrows
Life Cycle Assessment of Toner
The authors state (Abstract page I) that from the point of view of environmental load, "the re-use alternative is full measured two times better".
Source: "Life Cycle Assessment of Toner Cartridge HP C4127X", Berglind & Eriksson, University of Kalmar, Sweden, 2002
Half the carbon at half the price
The vast majority of people are probably in favour of massive reductions of CO2 emissions. But is everyone prepared to accept restrictions on the life-style they're used to? Who will voluntarily do without electricity? A private car? Imported goods? All these things - and a thousand others that all need a power source - are popular and, let's face it, useful.
But refilling your own toner cartridge doesn't restrict anyone's lifestyle.
Arctic fox in the Canadian Arctic.
It enhances your life by saving you over two thirds of the price of a manufacturer's original toner cartridge.
And it enhances your life because you'll know that you did something for the planet and for the future. Dr. Gell calculates the CO2 saving to be 52% over three refills. Equivalent to 3.5kg of carbon dioxide for the average toner cartridge. And we've argued here that the DIY refill approach we've pioneered since 1992 has an even lighter carbon footprint (see above).
Humpback whale in front of an iceberg in the famous ice fjord of Ilulissat, Greenland.
We're asking for your support to create a kind of benign chain-reaction effect. Yes, we stand to make money from that, but we believe that the battle to reduce CO2 emissions does have to be commercialised.
Re-use, in the sense of directly using a resource again, is more beneficial than re-cycling (normally taken to imply an industrial process such as re-pulping paper fibre or re-forging scrap metal). And our "do-it-yourself" refill concept is pure re-use.
Northern hemispher"ism"
View from the top. The Arctic Ocean is hemmed in by land
Of course, the Antarctic is affected by climate change as well, but the Arctic has more humans in closer proximity and runs the risk of becoming a commercial shipping highway if the ice continues to diminish. So to all you penguins down south, we know how darn cute you are and you're time will come, but we're focussing on the North this time around.
Keep refilling in the free world.
