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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
projecInkjet 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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