How to Reduce Toner Usage with Your Laser Printer

One of the most efficient ways to cut costs and become more environmentally-friendly at work or at home is to modify your colour printing habits.

Often you can unknowingly engage in wasteful practices – from needlessly printing in colour to replacing toner prematurely. Not only is this bad for the environment, but it could be costing you hundreds or even thousands of pounds. Being more aware of your habits and cutting corners where you can are the first steps in reducing your costs, your colour printing issues and your environmental footprint.

• Be Sceptical of Low Toner Warnings

When a low toner warning comes up on a laser printer, you may be inclined to change the cartridge right away. However, many of these warnings come up when the cartridge still has 25 percent of its toner left. This could equate to an extra 400-500 pages you could print using that same cartridge. Keep an extra cartridge or two on hand, but use your current toner cartridge until it runs out. You should replace your toner when your pages become faded instead of right after you get a warning to ensure you are getting the most use out of your cartridge possible.

• Reduce Stop/Start Cycles

In addition to waiting to change your toner cartridge, you can also avoid using stop/start cycles to further reduce your usage. During the stop/start cycle toner will accumulate on the drum even if you are not printing anything. This is a wasteful practice that many people do not even realise their printers are doing. To avoid this, go into your “Printer Properties” tab on your computer and adjust the settings so that your pages will only start printing after the last page is spooled. This will reduce the number of times your printer will stop and start up again, saving you a lot of toner.

• Use Print Preview

Especially if you’re printing a webpage, check the preview before printing. Often with webpages there is a lot of extraneous material. Advertisements in the margins or random user comments at the end of an article take up a lot of space. By looking at the preview, you can see exactly what will be printed, how many pages it will be and if there are any extra pages that you can completely cut out from your printing. This will reduce your toner and paper usage substantially.

Be especially wary of ads when printing in colour, as these will waste even more toner than extra text. Sometimes it is more useful to simply copy the text from a webpage, paste it in a document and print from there to avoid all the clutter on the webpage.

• Print in Black and White When Possible

To save on ink and toner, print in black and white or grayscale when possible. This can be adjusted under “Printer Settings.” Unless you are printing material for a client or visuals are essential to your document, you can probably skimp on colour. Also, be frugal with your use of graphics and images when printing since images require a lot more toner than text.

Although colour printing can be expensive, there are many ways you can adjust your habits to reduce costs. Finding different ways to save paper and toner are some of the easiest solutions to less costly and wasteful printing.

Local Experts

We are here to help with local, friendly advice. Our experienced and impartial staff will take the time to understand your printing needs and recommend the right printer and supplies for you. Find a Cartridge World store near you.