JAPAN:POST OFFICES COLLECTING EMPTY TONER & INK CARTRIDGES

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Post Offices Collect Empty Ink Cartridges in Japan
Apr 08Six printer manufacturers and Japan Post Holdings collaborate.A collection box used for the “Ink Cartridge Home Coming Project”
Brother Industries Ltd, Canon Inc, Dell Inc, Seiko Epson Corp, Hewlett-Packard Japan Ltd and Lexmark International announced that they launched the “Ink Cartridge Home Coming Project” to collect ink cartridges of home inkjet printers in Japan.”Printer manufacturers have individually made efforts like setting collection boxes at consumer electronics stores, but they (ink cartridges) are often disposed of as general trash,” said Haruo Murase, executive vice president of Canon Marketing Japan Inc. “Every company was beginning to feel its limitations.”

The companies expect that the collaborative collection will increase the number of collection points and raise awareness of the users to increase the collection rate of ink cartridges.In the project, the post offices and distribution system of Japan Post Holdings Co Ltd are used. As of April 8, 2008, the companies have collection boxes in 3,638 main post offices across Japan. Collected cartridges are sorted by maker and recycled by each manufacturer.Mizube Laboratory, special subsidiary of Seiko Epson, sorts the cartridges. The postal service delivers the collection boxes from post offices to Mizube Laboratory and the sorted cartridges from the laboratory to the printer manufacturers.

Most of the six manufacturers recycle collected cartridges mainly as row materials. Seiko Epson, however, reuses the cartridges.In Japan, about 200 million ink cartridges are sold per year. But the collection rate is about 10% at present, said a person in charge of the project. The person expects that the collection rate will be quickly increased 10% by the project and continue to grow thereafter.The cost of the collaborative collection is borne by the six companies. The contribution percentage of each company depends on the amount that the company collects and the percentages that the companies agreed on in advance, the person said.The companies said this is the world’s first collaborative collection of ink cartridges.”Now that we have agreed on the collaborative project in Japan, we are going to seriously consider expanding the project to overseas,” said a person in charge of the projec

Inkjet recycling scheme aims for greener times
Japan’s post office gathering cartridges of all stripes The industry giants are encouraging customers to recycle their used cartridgesThe piecemeal process of recycling inkjet cartridges may be centralised soon if a trial in Japan involving six industry giants bears fruit.The clean half dozen, including Dell, Lexmark and HP, this week started a trial that has placed collection boxes for ink cartridges of all six manufacturers in 3,600 post offices across Japan Posters encouraging customers to drop off their used cartridges are in place – they also explain that the entire collection is sorted and each piece of plastic is returned to its maker for recycling.

Current rates are low
The current system in Japan and many Western countries relies on individual companies placing collection boxes in electronics shops and supermarkets.this yields a low 10 per cent recycling rate on all cartridges purchased – a figure the Japanese scheme aims to improve considerably. Given that Japan alone uses 200 million of the disposable ink shots a year, the scope for improvement is clear.Although the two Tokyo post offices we visited this afternoon had yet to see their first ink deposit, the firms involved all have high hopes, saying they may take the scheme overseas if it works well.

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April 10, 2008 at 11:16 AM