HP Recycled Plastic Ink Cartridges Up 50%

More than 75 percent of HP’s ink cartridges and 24 percent of HP LaserJet toner cartridges are now manufactured with “closed loop” recycled plastic, the company says.

This represents a 50 percent increase in the number of HP ink cartridges manufactured with recycled content in the last year.

HP’s closed loop cartridge recycling process uses recycled plastic from returned HP cartridges as well as plastic from other sources, including recycled plastic bottles and plastic apparel hangers to create new Original HP ink cartridges.

Reusing engineered materials, HP says it has contributed to the circular economy by:

• Keeping 566 million returned HP cartridges out of landfills since 1991.
• Using 2.5 billion post-consumer plastic bottles to manufacture new HP ink cartridges since 2005.
• Incorporating 1.1 million pounds of recycled apparel hangers into the most recent expansion of the recycling process.
• Manufacturing more than 2 billion Original HP ink and toner cartridges made with recycled content.
• Delivering recycled plastic from HP’s closed loop recycling process with a 33 percent lower carbon footprint and 54 percent lower fossil fuel consumption in its production than new plastic.

HP offers customers in 50 countries and territories free cartridge recycling through the HP Planet Partners program. Customers can return used cartridges through HP’s retail and reseller partners by dropping cartridges off at one of 9,000 drop-off locations around the world.

Business supplies provider Quill.com last week said it has recycled nearly 3 million ink and toner cartridges since launching a national Ink and Toner Recycle Program in 2011.