So what did this represent? Well, as someone guessed, it is the amount of oil that it takes to produce one toner cartridge.

Technically, it takes about 3/4 of a gallon of oil to make one, but you get the point. Everybody is aware of what’s going on these days with oil prices and all the attention on global warming, and those are two very good reasons why we should do what we can to limit the resources used to produce new toner cartridges. Every time someone purchases a remanufactured or compatible toner cartridge, you save that much oil. Even if you don’t need a new one and you just recycle the cartridge in some way, that is still helping the environment. (On a side note, it takes about three ounces of oil to manufacture a standard inkjet cartridge.)

In addition to the resources it takes to produce a cartridge, once it has been used it continues to have an environmental impact. You can find different specific numbers cited in different stories, but the fact remains that hundreds of millions of toner and ink cartridges are thrown away every year. Given the number of cartridges thrown away every year and amount of time it takes them to decompose, more and more waste is piling up every year.

Now we aren’t saying that if we all use recycled ink cartridges that we will somehow solve our oil problem. But the fact is that a lot of people worry about the problem and don’t know what they can do or how they can have an impact. Recycling your cartridges or using remanufactured products is one easy way you really can have an impact.

These days we are all pretty diligent about recycling our cans, newspapers and our grass clippings – so why not our ink cartridges?