Ways To Go Green With Printing... That Aren’t Changing The Cartridges You Buy

If you happen to be a regular reader of the Cartridge World blog, you’ll know that buying our particular brand of remanufactured toner cartridges or refilled ink cartridges is not only a good choice for your wallet, but also a good choice for environment. Saving money AND the planet? There’s not many products you can say that do that.

We hammer home the point quite often, mainly because the environment is such an important issue that it bears repeating regularly. However, it isn’t the only way you can ‘go green’ with your printer - not by a long shot. Below, we’ve listed some more novel ways to do your bit for Mother Nature; saving you a few quid and a guilty conscience!

Buy Recycled Paper

We’ll start off with an easy one. Easy in the sense that you’re actually probably doing it already - it’s probably harder to buy paper with no recycled content in whatsoever nowadays than it is to buy a more eco-friendly alternative. Still, it’s good to make sure; check the packaging of any paper before you buy it for the percentage of recycled materials that went into producing the paper. The higher this number, the more eco points you can reward yourself!

Recycle or Reuse Printer Packaging

Printers come in a lot of packaging; you’ve got the behemoth box (always fun to lug home if you happened to buy your printer on the high street), the styrofoam thingys that hold the printer in place, not to mention a lot of cardboard too. What should you do with all this packaging once you’ve unpacked your printer?

If you answered ‘chuck it in the bin’, stop reading, scroll back to the top of the post and start reading again because you’ve probably missed the point of this post. For those of you who answered ‘recycle it in a responsible manner’, ‘use it as storage’ or ‘make an awesome fancy dress costume from it’, congratulations!

Turn Your Printer Off When You’ve Finished Using It

Are you the sort of person who leaves all the switches on at night? Then this one’s for you; make sure you turn your printer off after you’ve finished using it. An idle printer is still a printer that’s using electricity so always remember to power down. It’s so simple, yet so effective.

However, one problem that does arise from doing this is that your printer won’t be able to perform it’s sporadic yet essential automated cleaning cycles. Make sure that you’re carrying out a manual clean at least once a week to make up for this and keep your printer working at it’s best!

Print Less

Every page you print uses up vital resources, so the most obvious way to reduce your environmental impact is to print less. Digital sharing, via the cloud, Bluetooth or even good ol’ email, uses virtually no physical resources (beyond electricity) and is often a much easier way to share documents than physical printing!

So there you have it, a few simple but essential tips to keep in mind when you print!