The Truth About Free Inkjet Cartridge Recycling

by: Niall Roche



In a recent stand-up routine, comedian George Carlin suggests that maybe man’s reason for existence is because the Earth wants plastic.

The comedy team, Penn & Teller, assert in their cable show “Bulls**t” (bullpucky?) that recycling isn’t really all that useful and maybe not necessary.

Whether the Earth wants plastic or not, recycling of inkjet cartridges is useful in many different ways. However, before you choose where to recycle your inkjet cartridge, do a little research to make your recycling efforts effective. Recycling won’t work if we don’t close the loop. Many charitable institutions around the world have initiated ink cartridge recycling programs, which fund hospitals, school activities and other social concerns. This type of funding cuts costs in many ways from tax breaks for charitable donations to lowering the price that we have to pay for the services the funded organizations provide. In addition, remanufactured compatible inkjet cartridges are usually a fraction of the cost of brand name inkjet refills.

Several inkjet printer manufacturers also maintain recycling programs. However, your recycled ink cartridge doesn’t always make it around the loop.

Epson, in cooperation with Funding Factory, recently launched a free recycling program for its customers. Schools and businesses can get points for collecting and remitting empty cartridges to Epson.

However, the cartridges are not remanufactured or refilled. They are incinerated. To be fair, mention must be made that the incineration is at an environmentally friendly waste-to-energy plant; however, it’s easy to see that Epson is the big winner in this recycling effort. Their recycling plan takes cartridges out of the hands of remanufacturing plants that can offer less expensive remanufactured compatible cartridges to the consumer.

Hewlett Packard also has a free recycling program and they proudly announce that more than 1.8 million HP inkjet cartridges were recycled in 2003. Unfortunately, for the consumer, plastics and metal from the HP cartridges are also disassembled and made into new products. Other components are “used to generate energy or are disposed of in an environmentally responsible manner.”

Canon offers its customers several options for recycling toner cartridges, including a single return option, an up-to-eight multiple return option, and a bulk return option. Whichever you choose, a shipping label can be downloaded directly from their website. Return shipping via UPS is pre-paid by the company. It appears from many recycling and other eco-friendly programs displayed on their website, that Canon is a leader in environmental stewardship, however to date they have no recycling program in place for inkjet cartridges.

Lexmark’s recycling program is 100% free, as are the other printer manufacturer recycling programs. Customers request a kit using an online order form. Lexmark pays the postage both ways. However, there is one major difference between Lexmark’s program and the programs of the other print giants. Lexmark works with Planet Ark and Close the Loop in Australia to ensure every collected cartridge is remanufactured or recycled. In addition, they have similar recycling programs in Latin American and South Africa. In Europe, every purchase of a Lexmark high-volume cartridge comes with a postage-paid recycling bag included. Now that’s closing the circle!

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Do We Take The Internet For Granted?

by: Jesse S. Somer

One small change made a huge impact in a day in the life of Zardinia Zaffas.

I can see you right now. You’re sitting at your desk staring into the computer screen, the Internet is connected and the information is flowing like a river. If you are at work, you are randomly checking email, News sites and interesting topics in between your necessary tasks. There’s a woman like you out there, her name is Zardinia Zaffas and this is an interesting tale about a recent day in the life of her world.

Monday morning was like any other to Zardinia: waking up to the sound of 60’s music on her clock radio, breakfast of the usual oatmeal with maple syrup, grapefruit with a little brown sugar, peppermint tea and of course her favorite food-the sacred Pink Lady apple. This is followed by 20 minutes of yoga and a nice hot shower, then jump in the car and down the highway to her job as a software programmer.

However when Zardinia walked into the office on this particular Monday she could sense something was wrong. It was like an anxious buzzing cloud of confusion was raining weirdness in the air. As she sat down her supervisor walked up and gave her the news. The company’s Internet connection was temporarily ‘out of order’ and would be fixed at an indeterminate time. Well, life sure is unpredictable.

After logging in she realized she no longer had her usual access to the daily News information. Deciding to go down to the lobby where the newspapers were sold she took a ride down the elevator and grabbed a copy. Back at her desk as she perused through the International section she heard the sound of a throat being cleared. Looking up over the paper she saw the face of her supervisor once again, although this time his demeanor had gone through an obvious transformation.

“We don’t pay our staff to read newspapers here Miss Zaffas. If you want to read the Newspaper please do it on your own time at lunch or at home.” he said obviously agitated.

Zardinia’s face contorted with obvious surprise, “I’m sorry Mr. Stevenson.” A red sunset spread across her cheeks. “I’ll get back to work sir.”

Back at her desk after doing a few jobs Zardinia realized that she needed to make a few emails to her friends about her party on the weekend, but of course this was no longer possible as the Internet was down. After making a few calls she got onto her good friend Tommy Vasquez. After one of his patented jokes directed at her about the lack of romance in a single person’s lifestyle, she unfortunately didn’t realize how loud she had been laughing. Again a looming presence of towering shadow blocked out the light in front of her.

“Oh man.” She mumbled to herself. Another thought swam slowly through her mind, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen this guy so many times in one day.”

“Miss Zaffas, I’m sure that is not a personal call. Is it?” Mr. Stevenson was starting to resemble a hydroponically grown candy apple red tomato.

“I’ve got to go Tommy.” Hanging up the phone quickly Zardinia looked down sheepishly, but then suddenly stood up and looked Stevenson directly in the eye. This silenced the man and she went back to work at her computer as Stevenson walked away shaking his head in bewilderment. After working for a while she realized how much she missed searching the Web for all the random interesting thoughts that passed through her mind everyday.

“Not having the Net really sucks. It’s like I’m addicted or something. Or is it that I just can’t get away with murder anymore.” She whispered out loud.

Zardinia could be addicted to the Internet, a lot of people are; most of the good things in life have people who just can’t have enough of them. But I think in Zardinia’s case it’s more the fact that she’s gotten used to the hidden freedoms lying in the Web. It is often the case that we only realize how important and useful something is when we no longer have it. Maybe we need to have more appreciation and gratitude for this new tool that so many of us use without even thinking.

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Anti Trackback and Comment Spam Methods

by: Bobby Masteria

What is spam ?

Spam is text or URL, in one or several exemplars, neither being waited nor wished, not having, neither directly nor from its shipper, no relationship neither with the recipient nor with a possible

resource related to the recipient.

How does spam appears in blogs ?

Through the comments’ body and commentator’s URL.Through trackbacks’ excerpt and permalink’s URL

What are the anti-spam methods?

Authentication by connectionCAPTCHABlack ListBayesian Filter

Other methods to minimize spam :

Time Interval between submissions / Number of submissions per hour.DDD.Secure Form Mode : force page and submission to be manual.Rank Denial : Directs hyperlinks an intermediary server.Autoclose after N days: entry stops accepting comments or trackbacks.

Which data are analyzed by these methods ?

Active methods do analyze the shipper to check if it’s:a spamer by coparing its IP address with blacklisted ones. authorized by authenticationa human by CAPTCHAPassive methods do analyze : comment’s data:nicknameeMail addressURLmessagetrackback’s data (concerning the shipping blog):blog’s nameentry’s titleentry’s excerptpermalink’s URL

What are the limits to these methods ?

Cross use of several of these methods allows excellent results concerning comments, but weak results concerning trackbakcs.

Difference between comments and trackbacks is that comments are sent from the recipient’s blog, which allosw all above methods to be used, whereas trackbacks are sent from the shipping blog (this avoids the use and need of 2 interfaces).

• Consequently it’s not possible to use CAPTCHA, authentication and Secure Form Mode methods with trackbacks.
• Another big problem, when all the trackback’s data are unknown, especially the IP address, it is quite impossible to avoid spam, mainly because the blacklist and the bayesian filter are becoming inefficient.
• Last inconvenient, trackback autodiscovery is usefull for bookmarklets but also to spamers to who it gives the trackback URL.

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