14/05/2015
The Mindarie Regional Council has made the top ten councils recycling printer cartridges. Last year 1,399 printer cartridges were collected at the Recycling Centre which were then sent to Planet Ark for recycling. Just another example of where the MRC is ‘winning back waste’. Printer cartridges contain many valuable materials that can be recycled
Printer cartridges collected through the ‘Cartridges 4 Planet Ark' program are sorted and, depending on their condition, returned to the manufacturer for reuse or dismantled, with plastics, metals, toner and ink collected and refined for recycling. They are turned into a wide range of items including commodities like aluminium, ferrous metal, stainless steel and over six different plastic types, as well as new products like cartridges, pens, rulers, asphalt additives, and eWood™ (a plastic wood) which is used to make park benches, fencing and garden beds.
Every day in Australia around 9,000 cartridges are diverted from landfill through ‘Cartridges 4 Planet Ark'. Overall, 27 million cartridges have been recycled since the program began in 2003 and approximately 12,000 tonnes of valuable resources such as metals and plastics have been recovered.