Schools invited to Recycle It in Recycle Week 21-27 June 2010

To mark Recycling Week, 21 - 27 June 2010, school pupils all over the UK are being invited to collect empty printer cartridges to save them being needlessly thrown into landfill, in an innovative programme that helps improve pupils’ environmental awareness while earning extra money for school funds.

The scheme, Recycle It, has been created by Cartridge World, the UK’s largest retailer of refilled and remanufactured cartridges.

Recycle Week is an annual event held in June, organised by the Recycle Now campaign. Now in its sixth year, the aim of the week is to encourage more people to recycle household items more often.

Cartridge World’s Recycle It program provides schools and their pupils with everything they need to get their own printer cartridge recycling scheme up and running: free promotional posters, flyers, letters and collection bins. Pupils and teachers are also provided with access to interactive online resources that encourage a recycling, reusing approach.

The simple scheme encourages pupils, parents and teachers to collect empty printer cartridges in specially designed collection bins which can be positioned in school.  For every empty cartridge collected in the special bins, Cartridge World will donate 50p to the school.  Parents can further support the school by having their printer cartridges refilled by Cartridge World.  For every refilled cartridge, a donation of £1 will be made to the school.

Mark Holland, Cartridge World’s UK General Manager explains: “We’ve developed Recycle It to provide schools with an easy, effortless way to collect used cartridges so that they can be recycled and reused and it is full of fun facts for pupils too – for example did you know that each year, the number of cartridges thrown away instead of being reused could almost fill Big Ben. It is a small step towards helping pupils learn the valuable lesson that we need to work together to preserve the planet’s resources and as a bonus, they can help earn extra income towards school trips and equipment."

To find out more fun facts visit the website at www.cartridgeworld.co.uk/statistics

Each year in the UK alone over 45 million cartridges are needlessly thrown into landfill*, each one taking up to 1,000 years to decompose**. Cartridge World customers, including schools and parents, are already making a significant impact on these figures. The company’s recycling figures for April 2009 – March 2010 show that over two million inkjet cartridges and 242,000 laser cartridges were saved from going to landfill.


To find out more about Recycle It for schools, or to register your school, please visit www.cartridgeworld-recycle-it.co.uk


*UK Cartridge Remanufacture Association, 2006.
**International Imaging Technology Council, http://www.consumerchoice.info/faq.htm, October 2008.