HP Announces 50% Increase in Cartridge Recycled Content

According to HP, over 75% of its ink cartridges and 24% of its LaserJet toner cartridges are currently manufactured with “closed loop” recycled plastic. It is a 50% increase in the recycled content for HP ink cartridges.

As was revealed, HP’s “closed loop” cartridge recycling process “uses recycled plastic from its returned cartridges as well as plastic from other sources, including recycled plastic bottles and plastic apparel hangers to create new original HP ink cartridges”.

HP reported that it has manufactured over 2 billion of its original ink and toner cartridges with recycled content for the first quarter of FY2014. Also, the recycled plastic from its “closed loop” recycling process helped HP obtain a 33% lower carbon footprint and 54% lower fossil fuel consumption in its production than with new plastic.

Stephen Nigro, Senior Vice President for Inkjet and Printing Solutions at HP, noted, “From cartridges with recycled plastic to energy-efficient printing products and waste-reducing packaging design, we are offering customers solutions that make it easy for them to enjoy cost and resource savings in their everyday lives.”

Other HP achievements from reusing engineering materials include: keeping 566 million returned HP cartridges out of landfills since 1991; using 2.5 billion post-consumer plastic bottles to manufacture new HP ink cartridges since 2005; and incorporating 1.1 million pounds of recycled apparel hangers into the most recent expansion of the recycling process.