The research, carried out by First Environment, looked at the entire life cycle of remanufactured cartridges and compared the environmental impact against that of the HP 96A cartridge, produced by Hewlett Packard.
Revealing the results of the study in London this week, First Environmental said that those printer cartridges which are re-used are usually re-used only once before being thrown away. And, since new cartridges can last twice as long as the re-used product, the environmental benefits of re-use can be marginal, the researchers suggested.
Brian Glazerbrook, of First Environmental, said: “No definitive statement can be made about the environmental preferability of one product type over the other. A lack of differentiation calls into question the commonly held belief that remanufactured cartridges create less environmental impact than first life cartridges.
He added: “Although the remanufactured cartridge has some advantages, the lower cartridge quality means that the page yield is also lower. This increases the environmental impact.”
Mr Glazerbrook also pointed out that the recycling program that Hewlett Packard has in place for its cartridges offsets the environmental impacts at other stages in the life cycle of the contract.
Recycling
Commenting on the study, Hewlett Packard's supplies and sales director Jamie Gryce said that the study had shown that many cartridge re-manufacturers do not have recycling systems in place for re-used cartridges that could no longer be re-used.
Mr Gryce said: “We are not saying that HP cartridges are better and we realise that there is a wide spectrum of remanufactures from top end through to very bad. We want consumers to get more informed when buying cartridges.
“They should look for credible recycling programs from cartridge suppliers, find out what happens to a companies end of life cartridges and ask suppliers what they are doing to minimize their product’s impact on the environment,” he added.
Unlike other IT equipment, printer cartridges are not currently covered by producer responsibility legislation in Europe, since they are classed as “consumables”, and therefore not covered by the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive.
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