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See The Process Of How Hp Crushes Empty Cartridges (Video)
Why bother doing this when you could just refill the old ones and save the trouble?CLick On this link to See the Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5WMAORbFMtEBy Nick Aster Published on Apr 23, 2013
Here, ink cartridges are received, sorted, cleaned, and metals and other non-plastic components removed. Then, plastic is chopped into smaller bits sorted by type and color. At that point, the situation gets a little more complicated and Lavergne’s secret recipe comes into play.
I’ve just wrapped up a tour of the Lavergne group recycling plant in Montreal. Among other things, Lavergne is one of the major recycling partners for HP and Montreal is their second major recycling facility in North America (the other is in Smyrna, TN and Leon Kaye visited it last year).It’s tempting to assume that recycling plastic ink cartridges is as simple as tossing them in a grinder, melting them down, and re-forming new cartridges. But myriad issues from quality control to plastic availability make the process a lot more complicated.
Lavergne’s process actually begins in Smyrna. There, ink cartridges are received, sorted, cleaned, and metals and other non-plastic components removed. Then, the proverbial grinding takes place and plastic is chopped into smaller bits sorted by type and color. At that point, the situation gets a little more complicated and Lavergne’s secret recipe comes into play.
Lavergne receives about one shipping container per day full of shredded cartridge material. As it turns out, even this quantity isn’t enough to meet the full demand for new ink cartridges. As a result, shredded PET bottles are added – the exact amount varies according to what’s available. This combination of plastics is then mixed inside of an enormous v-shaped blending machine. Finally, it’s extruded and ground up once again into the raw material that will ultimately be used for new ink cartridges.
Why bother doing this when you could just refill the old ones and save the trouble?
It would seem logical to just refill old ink cartridges rather than going through the trouble of all this shredding, sorting, and recycling. Unfortunately, according to HP, there are so many unknown variables and quality control issues involved with re-using old cartridges that the somewhat more involved closed-loop recycling process described here remains a better option economically and environmentally.
The future challenge is how to ensure that ALL ink cartridges wind up being recycled – a complicated evolution of consumer behavior that HP is still at the beginning stage of addressing.
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