*NEWS*SERVING A CARTRIDGE TRADE

[Anonymous]

Serving cartridge trade
COuple finds opportunity in recycling pricey computer printer  CARTRIDGES …Oh the money people would save if inkjet and laser printer cartridges ran on Dom Perignon.
After
all, the famously expensive New Year’s bubbly costs a fraction of what
conventional printer ink costs, according to a November article in
Business-Week magazine – $13 an ounce for a 1990 vintage Dom, compared
with $34 an ounce for your average brand-name printer ink.
And
that’s why Chuck Sawyer and his wife, Kathy, hope to cash in on the
lucrative printer-ink business by offering refills at a fraction of the
retail cost.
The couple bought the rights to South Australia-based
Cartridge World’s metropolitan Tucson market before opening their first
location about a year ago in Midtown Tucson. With a new Northwest Side
location, the couple is poised to educate the public about the benefits
of reusing printer cartridges through an ongoing community service
campaign.
By paying participating organizations an average of $1 per
used cartridge, Cartridge World gains needed supplies while the groups
collecting cartridges raise needed funds.
Even the cartridges that can’t be reused are sent for recycling instead of to the dump, Chuck Sawyer said.
“It’s a renewable resource if people just knew about it,” he said.
Several school parent-teacher associations have already jumped on the bandwagon, raising hundreds of dollars in the process.
The
SaddleBrooke Rotary recently wrapped up a fund-raising drive to send
phone cards with local troops who are being deployed overseas, said
Nancy Haugh, community service director for the Rotary.
The group put cartridge collection boxes in two of the SaddleBrooke libraries for three months, Haugh said.
They collected enough used cartridges to purchase six 55-hour phone cards at $38 each, she said.
“It should take care of a whole group of people.”
The
SaddleBrooke Rotary will continue to collect cartridges to exchange for
funds for other projects into the new year, she said.
Teacher Mary Roth had the Sawyers’ daughter in her third-grade class last year when she learned about Cartridge World.
She
had the class do recycling research and hosted a poster contest about
it, she said. Then she began a class fund-raiser with Cartridge World.
“Cartridge
World gives money back to the community, and the kids have a recycling
program. The win is that (Cartridge World) does most of the work, and
our children are reimbursed,” she said. “Usually the kids just recycle
for free, but this turned out to be a moneymaker.”
She’s now working with the Canyon del Oro High School choir booster club to recycle cartridges as a fund-raiser, she said.
And
she’s begun buying the refilled cartridges for personal use at home,
where she saves about a third of what she used to spend on printer ink,
she said.
Sawyer said about half of the stores’ business actually
comes from other small and midsize businesses. Cartridge World offers
pickup and drop-off service for those clients, who report savings of 40
percent or more.
He pulled out a laser cartridge for the Hewlett-Packard 4000 series, which normally retails for $128. His price: $75.99.
Carolyn
Harrison, office coordinator at Walbro Engine Management, which runs
about a dozen HP LaserJet printers every day for everything from human
resources to information technology, said the company switched to
Cartridge World in early May.
“They’re the only ones we get all our
toner cartridges from now,” she said. “The savings is the most
important thing with any company.

[Author]

January 13, 2006 at 10:43 AM