Environmental Considerations
Recycling of pre-consumer waste toner is practiced by most manufacturers. Classifying toner to the desired size distribution produces off-size rejects, but these become valuable feedstocks for the compounding operation, and are recycled this way. Post-consumer waste toner appears primarily in the cleaning operation of the photo-printing machine. In early printers, as much as 20 to 25% of feed toner would wind up in the cleaner sump and be discarded as waste. Improved printer efficiencies have reduced this waste stream to lower levels. Some printer designs have attempted to divert this waste toner back into the virgin toner reservoir for direct reuse in the printer; these attempts have met with mixed success. Some consideration and fewer industry attempts have been made to reclaim waste toner by cleaning it and "remanufacturing" it.
Most toner goes to printed pages, a large fraction of which are ultimately recycled in paper recovery and recycling operations. Removal of toner from the pulp is not easy, and toner formulations to ease this step have been reported. Hydrolyzable, water-soluble, and caustic-soluble toner resins have been reported, but do not appear to enjoy widespread application. Recovery of waste toner with other inks and resins from paper recycling plants occurs as sludge, a low-value off-product.
In the UK, large compatible ink cartridge manufacturers like Jet Tec have implemented toner recycling programmes in order to receive back empty cartridges for refilling of HP, Lexmark, Dell, etc. cartridges, as no compatible version is readily available.
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