European Consumers Urged to Reuse Instead

The European cartridge association has made a video it expects will go viral—particularly with consumers in the office environment.

The European Toner and Ink Recyclers’ Association (ETIRA) has a low tolerance towards the single-use of printer cartridges and has successfully worked with legislators over the past 16 years to educate, inform and lobby for reuse legislation.

ETIRA will launch the first of three videos promoting reuse in Brussels this week.

“The video promotes reuse as a better option than continually using new single-use cartridges,” says outgoing ETIRA president David Connett (pictured). “We want to promote reuse as a better option and to decrease single-use cartridges,” he added. Connett explained reuse reduces the environmental impact of manufacturing new cartridges and reduces costs for consumers in the process.

“We chose a cartoon theme for the video to convey an easily understood message and emphasise that reuse is a very favourable option for printer cartridge consumers.”

It is expected the video will be used in a social media strategy across the office imaging sector. According to Connett, “The OEMs want to shred used cartridges and recycle the materials. While this is better than landfill, it is way off the better reuse option and should come well after reusing the empty cartridges. In today’s world, the focus has to be on reducing what we consume, reusing everything we produce and then recycling the true waste and zero going to landfill.”

The video is two minutes long and ETIRA plans to release two further videos covering the topics of “Reduce” and “Recycle”.

Formed in 2003, ETIRA is a Belgian registered, non-profit organisation that represents the interests of the inkjet and toner cartridge remanufacturers and related service providers and is the recognised industry body for all topics affecting the industry. ETIRA provides many services to its members: legal and regulatory advice, public relations, environmental impacts, quality and standardisation forums and member contact platforms. ETIRA also manages a remanufacturing Code of Conduct and the ticked-R collective mark assuring consumers of less expensive but 100% environment-friendly remanufactured cartridges. Contact Secretary-General  Vincent van Dijk, info@etira.org.