The Environment , Issues and facts!

As a nation we are becoming more aware of the effects of living in a throw away society and we are coming to the conclusion that it has to change. For our part, we are looking at the effects of people using throw away single use ink cartridges and what we can offer as solutions to this. As we gather more information we will publish it on this site or attach links to the information source.

The world's annual consumption of plastic materials, according to Waste Online, has increased from around 5 million tonnes in the 1950s to nearly 100 million tonnes today, which means that we use 20 times as much plastic today than we did 50 years ago.

source: www.reducereuserecycle.co.uk

The amount of plastic waste generated annually in the UK is estimated to be nearly 3 million tonnes. An estimated 56% of all plastics waste is used packaging, three-quarters of which is from households. It is estimated that only 7% of total plastic waste arisings are currently being recycled.

The production and use of plastics has a range of environmental impacts. Firstly, plastics production requires significant quantities of resources, primarily fossil fuels, both as a raw material and to deliver energy for the manufacturing process. It is estimated that 4% of the world's annual oil production is used as a feedstock for plastics production and an additional 3-4% during manufacture.

The disposal of plastics products also contributes significantly to their environmental impact. Because most plastics are non-degradable, they take a long time to break down, possibly up to hundreds of years - although no-one knows for certain as plastics haven't existed for long enough - when they are landfilled. With more and more plastics products, particularly plastics packaging, being disposed of soon after their purchase, the landfill space required by plastics waste is a growing concern.

Conservation of non-renewable fossil fuels - Plastic production uses 8% of the world's oil production, 4% as feedstock and 4% during manufacture.

Source: www.wasteonline.org.uk

Amazingly, last year alone, we collectively dumped over 375 million used empty inkjet cartridges into our burgeoning landfill sites.

 Recycling your laser cartridges & mobile phones with Empty Cartridge is environmentally friendly and helps to reduce the 250 million cartridges dumped in landfill sites in the last decade .

According to current statistics, only 5% of empty toner cartridges are currently being recycled, this means 95% of these items are simply discarded and end up in landfill sites. As well as taking up room in our already-limited landfill sites, it can take up to 1.5 litres of oil to produce a new laser cartridge from scratch and a discarded used toner cartridges and ink cartridges can take over 1000 years! to decompose, this is not good news for our environment!

Source: www.businesslink.gov.uk

It is estimated that only 7% of plastic waste is recycled at present.  So what can we do to reduce the 93% of plastic that currently goes to landfill?

1.Reject over-pacakged items (a tough choice when four packs of a product encased in a plastic wrapper is cheaper than buying the items individually. Yet that wrapper must increase the production costs surely?)

2. Choose products that use recyclable packaging such as glass rather than plastic. Another tough choice - a favourite fruit juice of mine just changed its packaging from glass to plastic.

3. Reuse carrier bags, take your own bags to the supermarket and give unwanted ones to Tesco - they will accept any bags, not just Tesco ones.

4. Reuse plastic packaging where possible - margarine and ice cream tubs can be used for storage and for planting seeds in for example. Drinks bottles such as water bottles can be refilled from larger containers (or the tap of course). Be careful never to reuse drinks bottles for substances such as cleaning materials where they could be accidentally drunk by a child.

5. Choose products where refill options are available. Many health food shops will refill Ecover bottles for example, and the The Body Shop will also refill bottles.

6. If roadside collections are not available for plastics, take sorted plastics to a recycling collection centre. Bottle tops should always be removed from bottles as they are of a different material.

7. Choose plastic items made from recyled materials. Plastic bags, fencing, garden furniture, water butts, composters, sed trays and fleeces can all be made from recycled materials.

 Source: www.reducereuserecycle.co.uk

It can take upto 500 years for the plastic case in an inkjet cartrirdge to break down after being placed in landfill.