Printer

One of the most disturbing creations of latter day consumerist disposable production is the modern domestic printer.

The cartridges are expensive, plastic and contain very little ink, they end up in the sea poisoning whales and other aquatic life, and are followed in their demise quite quickly by the printer they were originally bought for.

I have had Ciss systems and this does slow down the shocking waste I feel owning these plastic time bombs, but I know at some point, due to the irregular amount of actual printing I do these days, it will eventually leak and seize the parts.

We are encouraged not to worry about it - that's just modern life - but in reality there is a guenuine man made disaster here, plastic that does not end up in the sea polluting wildlife, ends up in dumps and land fills in the other side of the world poisoning people.


See here



Of course our brethren in the international diy community see this as an opportunity

http://geek-mag.com/posts/258146/


DIYer gunna DIY!!

Which is of course highly commendable. However this is only a tiny solution from a catestrophic problem.

A lot of other countries are following China's example. India, for instance.

It's not a big problem for Europe, as most countries already are recycling most of their waste.

It will be a huge problem for some parts of the USA. They were used to getting around 6$ a ton for certain waste. Now they'll have to pay 60 to 90$ a ton for incineration or dumping in a landfill.

Someone told me about a small town that already removed all public waste bins on the side of the road, as they no longer could pay for them.

scott2000 said:

Yeah county/city management can get real hokey. I remember being up late one night watching the state gov channel and it was interesting to see some places struggling financially.

The particular problem I was watching was how they were trying to scramble to find new ways to tax people for the revenue lost from cell phone carrier taxes when companies like Metro started offering their plans....Seemed many of these places had taken out loans based on projected long term revenues from these carrier taxes and , that was proving a bad move,......

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I've been watching this play out in slow motion for decades... My (poor) town used to pay Waste Management to pick up our garbage  2x a week. Apparently it got, or was, too expensive so now town workers collect it once a week, and cart it off to a landfill in a different town. I have a cardboard box full of toxic trash (like CFL bulbs) with no place to carry it.

My town workers would happily dump it into the same land fill.

The comes down to economics. Some hazardous waste can be burned to extract energy but that has cost. Others is just a cost to safely dispose of. I doubt many are recycling the mercury out of CFL bulbs (but I do not know).

JR

I think the larger problem is that a huge amount of the stuff that is properly recycled by consumers  gets thrown away by the recycling companies because it isn’t profitable.  Hell in my area they won’t even take some products that have the recycle emblem on it like styrofoam....

> I doubt many are recycling the mercury out of CFL bulbs

Home Depot will take CFLs. (Not tubes.)

Apparently Lowes does also.

Do It!

I believe H-D over-sold us on CFLs, with cut-cost lamps that failed too soon. They should be part of the solution. I applaud them having an easy take-back bin. (Another bin takes your dead batteries, also over-sold by H-D.)

I do admit I wonder what H-D does with the CFLs. Do they just take them round back in the general Dumpster? An old bumph-sheet says they are handled responsibly: https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.productstewardship.us/resource/resmgr/imported/THD_CFL_ProgramFAQs7.10.08.pdf

Seeker said:

I think the larger problem is that a huge amount of the stuff that is properly recycled by consumers  gets thrown away by the recycling companies because it isn’t profitable.  Hell in my area they won’t even take some products that have the recycle emblem on it like styrofoam....

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There's always a solution.

Tokyo has the largest fish market in the world. It produces around 12 tons of used stryrofoam a week. With those amounts, a solution is simple. They press it at moderate temperatures and stack it. It gets exported to China and might end up as packaging material around your next DVD player, or something.

France has an 80 million € recycling plant for PET bottles. The granules that come out of this plant, get turned into new bottles, suitable for drinks and other food packaging uses. AFAIK, this is the first plant of this kind in the world.

You just need to want to develop a solution. That's all. Arguments of economics are just excuses, really.

It doesn't mean it's always easy. We've had separate collection for glass, separated in white glass and coloured glass for many years. A lot of it still goes to the landfill, because there's way to many coloured glass. But as glass is silicium, there's no harm to the environment and the profit from selling the white glass cover the cost of collection.

If you take a large city like New York as example, it's not that the population, or the city council don't want to. It's that there's so much corruption and organised crime around that it'll never work. NY still sends it waste to four or five gigantic landfills in other states. How long do you think they can keep that up?

The amount of plastics produced daily is so staggering that I can't recollect the number. The only solution is recycling. And that's not even hard, provided you collect different kind of plastics separately.

PRR said:

> I doubt many are recycling the mercury out of CFL bulbs

Home Depot will take CFLs. (Not tubes.)

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closest Home Depot is like 60 miles away, Lowes is only 25 miles away in other direction.

Apparently Lowes does also.

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I was just there last week...  Their web splash says they take CFLs, a recycling search site, says they take rechargeable batteries but doesn't show CFLs. I won't make a special trip but next time I go that way, I will carry my pile of toxic waste. 

I have avoided mixing this detritus in with my normal garbage as my neighbors likely do.

Do It!

I believe H-D over-sold us on CFLs, with cut-cost lamps that failed too soon. They should be part of the solution. I applaud them having an easy take-back bin. (Another bin takes your dead batteries, also over-sold by H-D.)

I do admit I wonder what H-D does with the CFLs. Do they just take them round back in the general Dumpster? An old bumph-sheet says they are handled responsibly: https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.productstewardship.us/resource/resmgr/imported/THD_CFL_ProgramFAQs7.10.08.pdf

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Yup, CFLs were a bridge technology kind of like modern EV batteries.  The CFL had other faults, like diode rectified internal PS that is not PFC. It was tolerated because they use so much less current than incandescent bulbs. I have a growing pile of still working CFLs as LEDs get cheaper and better.

I had an incandescent bulb in my drop light that failed 2 days ago...    the fragile filaments don't tolerate much of a hit. 
---
Apparently the blue pixels in OLED only have a half brightness life of 14k hours so not as robust as alternate technologies. Good, gives me an excuse to not pay up for that latest and greatest display technology.

JR

PS: I recycle my glass beer bottles, by refilling them with home brew.  8)

JohnRoberts said:

PS: I recycle my glass beer bottles, by refilling them with home brew.  8)

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That's the best way, for sure!

Over here, less than 5% of beer bottles are of the throw-away kind. Most get re-used by the brewer. Same for wine.

It's cans that are worrying. If aluminium, the energy needed for recycling is enormous. And some beercans are iron, so they need to be separated out...

I stopped having a printer in my house long ago, I didn't print nearly enough to justify the cost. The infrequent printing caused the ink cartridges to run out faster as they would dry out.  hardly cost prohibitive.  I find  taking files to a local print ship when needed is a much more elegant solution, not only do I get a better quality it's ultimately less expensive.

pucho812 said:

I stopped having a printer in my house long ago, I didn't print nearly enough to justify the cost. The infrequent printing caused the ink cartridges to run out faster as they would dry out.  hardly cost prohibitive.  I find  taking files to a local print ship when needed is a much more elegant solution, not only do I get a better quality it's ultimately less expensive.

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My local print shop is 10-20 miles away.

I dumped my inkjet(s) for a cheap dell laser printer that seems fine so far.

I do not print a lot but need to print invoices and shipping labels, so I need a reliable printer.

I've owned several different technology printers over the decades. The inkjets have to be the worst rip-offs of all. The inkjet cartridges were always drying out (?) long before they printed out estimated pages, and I even had back up cartridges dry out sitting in a sealed foil packet, inside a drawer.  .

JR

Mine I am lucky I can walk to as needed. They also do shipping so I can ship fro there as needed.  I also do the PDF/e-mail of invoices so I think I am doing my part as best I can.

Everything here is 9-11 miles away (beer and gas only 5 miles). It does not make sense to go out to print. It does make sense to box the CFLs and batts, drop-off as needed.

They CAN make thrifty printers (what a shock). Many years ago I had an OfficeJet which ran years on a set of ink carts. Only printer I ever had which lasted tax-day to tax-day without a refill. Obviously that was a mistake. Their current products don't offer anything like such life.

BUT-- I just found that my new H-P printer has an interesting add-on, "Instant Ink". Like Amazon Dash only slicker. You estimate how many pages/month you print. They bill a fixed price. 100/month is $5. This seems to be a hair cheaper than buying toner manually. Your printer must be online. It tells H-P when it gets low. They send toner to your door, with a return envelope for the empty. I've actually run 78 pages/month average, so would pay 6.4 cents a page, which is still cheaper than the 7c/pg for buying as needed. In return I never run out of ink (unless I do a big job), never buy ink in a panic and wait around the mailbox, and can run ALL my girlie-pix in HIGH-density color (since per page, no reason to use Draft).

My cheap (Dell) laser printer is almost two years old and still printing from the original toner cartridge. I have a back up toner cartridge sitting unopened.

I'd be on second or third inkjet cartridges by now... Due to dying out not from print quantity.

JR

JohnRoberts said:

My local print shop is 10-20 miles away.

I dumped my inkjet(s) for a cheap dell laser printer that seems fine so far.

I do not print a lot but need to print invoices and shipping labels, so I need a reliable printer.

I've owned several different technology printers over the decades. The inkjets have to be the worst rip-offs of all. The inkjet cartridges were always drying out (?) long before they printed out estimated pages, and I even had back up cartridges dry out sitting in a sealed foil packet, inside a drawer.  .

JR

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I've got an Epsom Ecotank printer. Lives up to its name - you can literally print hundreds, perhaps thousands of pages, on a set of ink. And the ink comes in little bottles, not tiny cartridges. And it comes with two sets of inks. And refill price is decent.

You'd almost think they had the consumer in mind...

I had a simple inkjet years back , was slow, noisy and didnt do any colours , but it would print off text till the cows come home , I must be on my fourth modern all singing and dancing print/scan/coppier and yes it just dies from time to time . Usually there are some diagnostic and print head cleaning modes in the menu , that does help a lot if your not printing regularly .

My brother is about to invest in a 44 inch Epson for his photographic and fine art print service ,its a huge outlay initially ,but the margins are good if you have the custom to keep it opperating regularly .

My Solution was to accept a Laser HP printer for free from a friend, and I bought a Powder container and I fill the cartridges myself.
Bought also the Chips to change in the cartridge.

The printer doesnt actually know how much ink/power is in the cartridge. Every print  is counted on the cartridge chip, the Printer reads data, after a pre-determined numer of prints by the manufacturer the printer will say you have to replace the cartridge.
So when you fill it with powder yourself  you have to change that chip to start counting from zero.

I buy the Powder and the chips from Ebay. It was not exepnsive, using the same Powder container for the last 3 years.

Unfortunately in the western countries there's no recycling for Printers, cartridges, CRT monitors or computers.
Recycle plants receive those parts, and sell the E-Waste to China (becoming less common), India or Ghana and Tanzania.
Those countries receive Containeers of E-Waste everyday, without Enviromental laws and Work laws a process os scavenging happens. It's the horrible reality of Electronic Waste

check this documentary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDSWGV3jGek&t=516s

Meanwhile in Africa...

I use monochrome laser printers because I almost never need color printing. I've had an HP model for over 10 years now. I think I replace the cartridge every two years or so. I've certainly got my monies worth out of that one.  That's attached to the DAW computer. I have another monochrome laser attached to the office computer that's about five years old. It goes through ink at about the same rate. The monochrome laser printers are cheap, print fast and are easy on the ink.

Gold said:

I use monochrome laser printers because I almost never need color printing. I've had an HP model for over 10 years now. I think I replace the cartridge every two years or so. I've certainly got my monies worth out of that one.  That's attached to the DAW computer. I have another monochrome laser attached to the office computer that's about five years old. It goes through ink at about the same rate. The monochrome laser printers are cheap, print fast and are easy on the ink.

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Completely Agree.

If you refiil the cartridge yourself then is even cheaper, heres some demonstration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmLZAa6Z27U

My Samsung colour laser ran out of toner a couple of months ago. These were still the first cartridges. Yes, I don't print much. It's over 10 years old.

I just bought a 2nd hand one that came with an extra set of toner, for 20 €. An original toner set is 160 €.

So I'm set for at least another 20 years and I've got spare parts...  ;D