Wednesday, June 3, 2009
A Small Business Helps Garden State Go Green by Partnering with InkCycle
Robert A. Barbiere is executive vice president at National Cartridge Supply, a national provider of environmentally-friendly ink and toner cartridges
Based in Morristown, NCS helps companies become more sustainable and environmentally conscious by using fully recycled and remanufactured ink and toner products. To meet this goal, it has partnered with InkCycle to provide grenk, a new line of remanufactured ink and toner cartridges designed to leave the smallest environmental footprint possible.
NCS is an environmentally-friendly specialty supplies company that focuses on the ink and toner market. NCS works with purchasing directors and managers to evaluate an organization’s printing and copying expenses and recommend products with optimal quality and cost.
Click here for the full article.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Would you Consider Buying Remanufactured Ink and Toner Cartridges?
Should You Use Remanufactured Ink Cartridges?
Here is a great article that explains the benefits of using remanufactured ink cartridges.
What Are Remanufactured Ink Cartridges?
These cartridges, sometimes called “recycled ink cartridges”, are used cartridges that have gone through a multi-step process that culminates with their being recharged with fresh printers ink.
When you purchase a remanufactured ink cartridge from a reputable dealer, initially it will be cleaned thoroughly. Then it’s filled with high quality printer ink. After being filled its internal pressure is checked. Only then is it inspected for potential leaks.
Once these cartridges have passed these regimens they are tested to ensure that they function optimally.
If the cartridge passes all its tests and meets all the necessary standards it is considered to be a remanufactured ink cartridge and is offered for sale.
A properly remanufactured cartridge that has been through these rigorous tests will not adversely affect your ink jet printer. It will work as well, and some say even better, than an original equipment manufacturer cartridge. That’s because the quality of printers ink used to refill it can even be of a higher standard.
What Are the Benefits of Using Remanufactured Ink Cartridges?
There are a couple of major benefits for using a remanufactured cartridges instead of an OEM cartridge.
1. Your most obvious benefit is that it will save you a lot of money. Recycled cartridges cost considerably less than original equipment manufacturer cartridges. You can actually save 50% or more when you purchase these cartridges.
If you or your company does a lot of printing this can amount to very significant savings over the course of time. Your print quality should not suffer because most remanufacturers guarantee superior quality.
2. The next benefit may seem altruistic, but it is undeniable that using remanufactured cartridges is ecologically sound. Unfortunately, every year countless millions of ink cartridges are dumped into landfills. Residual ink can leak out of these cartridge and cause pollution.
Also, since these cartridges are primarily made of plastic and metal, they will not degrade. They will take up space in landfills for perhaps generations to come. And, depending on where you live, available space for landfills has either been overtaxed and / or is unavailable.
Buying remanufactured ink cartridges is a win-win situation for you, your company, and the environment.
So, now you know the benefits? Would you consider buying remanufactured ink cartridges?
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Tickle Me Thursday: Has this ever happened to you?
We found some of the funniest videos about printers, ink and toner.
This is a part of our all-new series called Tickle me Thursday.
Enjoy!
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
By the Numbers…Carbon Neutronics™ Certified
Of course, it’s one thing to say you’re doing something environmentally responsible. It’s another thing to prove it.
That’s why we created the Carbon Neutronics Index. It’s a proprietary software program that we share with those who purchase and use grenk products. It helps customers calculate the tonnage they’re keeping out of landfills by choosing grenk.
Far too many businesses don’t get the credit they deserve for their exo-initiative. The Carbon Neutronics Index makes it easy to track and record the effect one company can make in reducing landfill waste and keeping cartridges in circulation for reuse.
It’s also a great tool for comparing the cost difference of using remanufactured grenk cartridges over original manufacturer print cartridges, and can provide measurable case studies to help customers build support for other environmental initiatives while improving their bottom line.
Carbon Neutronics™ is made up of three words: Carbon + Neutral + Electronics. CNI makes it easy to track and record the effect one company can make in reducing landfill waste and keeping cartridges in circulation for reuse. The Carbon Neutronics™ Index was created to provide companies with an accurate account of their potential e-waste that has been diverted by using grenk™ products.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
What really happens to print cartridges…
In the next four years, more than 590 million print cartridges will be consumed in North America. Where will they end up?
Millions will be simply thrown away, where they’ll eventually be dumped in landfills around the country.
Because of their hard plastic and metal materials, discarded cartridges can take hundreds, even thousands of years to decompose, and their unused inks and toners can leach into the surrounding soil and contaminate ground water.
Millions more will be tossed-in good faith- into recycling bins but these are often shipped overseas to less responsible countries. Harmful human labor practices are used to siphon unused toner from the cartridges and waste products are often burned in open ditches. Add this human misery to the pollution and energy drain caused by shipping millions of cartridges overseas and, well, it’s not really a solution.
Even the millions that will be legitimately recycled into other things will impact the environment. Plastics are reprocessed into “regrind” and used in plastic injection to make things like park benches. That’s great, but think of the energy used and the pollutants expelled from those processes, which will be repeated over and over.
grenk takes a different path. We control where every piece of our product ends up, from every metal spring to every plastic housing. We reuse what we can for its original purpose, and then make sure the rest is recycled under our control; using fewer natural resources and creating fewer end-waste cycles.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
We’re on YouTube too! green + ink = GRENK… get it?
This is a short version of a video created for grenk.
Friday, May 22, 2009
InkCycle sees profit potential in environmentally friendly product
By James Dornbrook of the Kansas City Business Journal
InkCycle founder and President Rick Krska hopes to create some serious green with the company’s latest product.
The product, called “grenk” (pronounced like a mashing together of green and ink), is a line of remanufactured printer toner and ink cartridges designed to be 100 percent environmentally friendly, including the packaging. The product even includes regular reports that tell customers exactly how much material their purchases have removed from the waste stream.
“The good news for us has always been that we’ve kept ink cartridges from going into the landfill after one use, so there has always been a 50 percent savings,” Krska said. “Now, we’re saying we want to clean up the rest of that waste stream so there is very little coming out the back end. We’re finding there are many companies out there that care about this.”
Krska said he was sitting in a café in California when the idea hit him that he could make a difference with a truly “green” product.
Toner cartridges are mainly plastic, he said, but also contain aluminum and steel parts. Recyclers exist for each part but not for the cartridge as a whole. So his idea was for InkCycle to separate the cartridge components.
“We put these together, so we can take them apart faster than anyone,” Krska said.
Click here for the full article.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
InkCycle was Green Before Green was Cool.
Reported by: Mark Clegg for NBC Action News
When it comes to living green, there’s a lot more to it than just recycling. A Metro company built their business on that 16 years ago, but they’re still looking for ways to improve the environment today.
InkCycle takes used toner and inkjet cartridges and rebuilds them.
“We take them and put them through a real extensive process,” explains InkCycle’s President and Chief Executive Servant Rick Krska. “We then clean them and refill them, repackage them, and deliver them back through resellers to customers.”
The company has come a long way since 1992 when Krska started with one clear mission — to keep electronic clutter out of our landfills.
“We were kind of green before green was cool,” Krska laughs.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
InkCycle in Industry Week: Putting Waste to Work
Putting Waste to Work
Forget the landfill. Manufacturers are getting better at finding ways to reuse their waste.
By Jill Jusko
Print Cartridges Get New Life
For InkCycle, a remanufacturer of toner and print cartridges, one could argue that it is inherently green in that it reuses spent cartridges that might otherwise end up in a landfill. That’s certainly true, at least in part, says Brad Roderick, executive vice president. “At the end of the day, we are rebuilding on somebody else’s trash.” He points out, however, that even remanufactured products at some point reach the end of their usable life.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
The grenk Process: Let’s Start Fresh
Take a look at what makes the grenk process green:
Boxes are made from the highest available content of recycled material and are chain-of-custody certified.
No tape! A proprietary pad and re-usable clips eliminate the need for tape.
Storage bags are made from a new oxygen-degradable polyethylene film that begins degrading in months instead of hundreds of years like standard bags.
Storage clips are returned for reuse or recycling.
Air pillows not only protect our cartridges, they reduce the amount of plastic we use.
We test-print every cartridge before we ship it. Those test sheets are then shredded and reused to fill the storage bags.
All components that aren’t reusable are placed into a best-practices recycling stream. Nothing is thrown away.
Blades, gears and OPC Drums are reconditioned and reused whenever possible.
It’s one thing to recycle a print cartridge. InkCycle’s been doing that since 1992. But with grenk, we recycled the entire process, finding new ways to make our cartridges-and our entire business-more eco-friendly and sustainable.