When you see companies promoting printer cartridge recycling, it is sometimes easy to get deceived by these companies motivations. Sure it’s great to recycle, reuse and save the environmental resources required to produce new cartridges. However I’m afraid this doesn’t tell the whole truth. There is a much more environmentally friendly option to recycling toner cartridges, and that is refilling them.

Don’t be misled, there is no real reason that toner cartridges shouldn’t be refilled many times BEFORE they are recycled. This would cut waste dramatically, even if the cartridges were reused once there would be a huge saving in environmental costs. Multiplied across the world the world the benefits would be enormous. There is one main reason that the average toner cartridge is not refilled however, that is because the printer companies don’t want you to.

None of the components in a laser toner cartridge are so badly manufactured that they only last one print run, when the ink runs outs a printer cartridge would work perfectly well if it was refilled. In fact this is what used to happen especially with photocopiers in the passed, all the cartridges had little stoppers on them which you could pour toner ink to refill them. However the companies noticed if they took these stoppers out people had to buy new cartridges and their profits soared. Slowly over a year or two these all went, and the little stoppers seemed like a thing of the past.

But then many companies noticed that it was relatively easy to make you own hole and seal with a generic stopper by yourself and they started to sell kits. These kits allowed you to keep using the printer cartridge by refilling it with ink. It is something I do today, it takes a few minutes and involves no skill whatsoever (luckily for me). It is a great feeling to know that you can reuse these toner cartridges over and over again. Without the cost and expense of rebuilding, recycling or worse them ending up in landfill.

Why Printer Firms want Printer Cartridge Recycling

So how did our Green crusading printer companies react to this development, well it’s simple they put computer chips in their toner cartridges to stop you refilling them. They want you to use that cartridge once, and once only – by encouraging you to recycle that cartridge they maintain a ‘green persona’ whilst maximising their profits. Every time you refill a toner cartridge you are reducing their profits, the computer chips ensure that the toner cartridge won’t work until that too is reset. That computer chips sole purpose is to prevent you reusing and recycling yourself – by far the greenest option is actively prevented by the printing companies.

Sure you’ll hear horror stories about print quality, damage to your printer etc and even voiding of warranty. But let me reassure you about those, if you use quality toner the results will be no different to a new cartridge. There’s no risk of damage to your printer – you’re just refilling ink and even if there was in many instances the costs savings are so high you could buy a new printer after every other refill !

Fear not the companies who provide the refilling kits can in most cases. provide a replacement computer chip which will prevent the companies greedy practice of disabling them – it is annoying as it is another step but is pretty simple. So next time you look at the fancy green glossy recycling bag supplied to you with your expensive toner cartridge – remember at the heart of it is no environmental idealism, there is just the cynical maintaining of profits and their bottom line.

Give it a try, for the vast majority of printers you can add another stage before the printer cartridge recycling one. Refill the cartridges can save you hundreds believe me and it requires no special skill. There’s many firms around – the one I use is called Tonertopup but there are lots of others. Make sure they use quality compatible toner for each toner cartridge and you should save 80% of your running costs and do the world a favor.