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Sustainability as a Starting Point

How do you reduce your company's climate impact?

Simple: collect empty cartridges with Recoll. We make sure they get a second, third, fourth and fifth life, without loss of quality. Good for the environment, easy for you.

Birds Bees and Business project restoring nature

Protecting raw materials

Producers of original print cartridges prefer their customers to buy new cartridges every time. That’s what their business model was based on sometime in the late 1980s. By now it is clear that the reserves on our planet are finite. Predation on resources is therefore at the expense of future generations.

Reducing the climate impact of ink cartridges is desperately needed. Recoll is working on that. We do this throughout the chain: from collection to sorting and from refilling to product development. By collecting and refilling cartridges, we at Recoll want to limit the use of valuable raw materials.

The average cartridge is reusable as many as five times

The power of circular

It is important to make more sustainable choices – focusing more on the power of circular. Opportunities abound. For example, we see that refilled cartridges still comprise only a limited portion of the total market share: less than 15%! In other words, more than half of all cartridges are never reused and most likely end up in the trash after one use. High time to change that.

Minimize carbon footprint with cartridges without CO2 emissions

Recoll extends the life of an ink cartridge. But we want to do more for the climate. Our logistics and production processes inevitably leave a mark on our CO2 emissions. We are therefore constantly looking for ways to reduce the climate damage that results. We’d like to show you how we do that.

Environmentally conscious business

In Europe, for example, we very deliberately work with a central distribution center. This way we limit the number of transport movements. Another example is the rinse water we use to clean collected cartridges. Before this water leaves the factory, extensive post-treatment takes place.

Sustainable partners

In addition to our efforts to reduce our environmental impact ourselves, we also work closely with sustainable partners. For example, we invest in Fairtrade. We do this in collaboration with FairClimateFund, part of Cordaid.

Fair carbon credits

Even though we do our very best: in this industry it is impossible to be emission-free. That’s why we want to offset our emissions. By buying carbon credits, Recoll finances Fairtrade projects that capture CO2. This is how we make the refilled cartridges of our RecycleClub brand 100% sustainable. Because the number of carbon credits Recoll buys for RecycleClub cartridges corresponds exactly to the CO2 emissions released in the production process. That makes our cartridges CO2 neutral.

We find it important that our positive impact is bigger than just CO2 offsetting. That’s why we deliberately choose Fair Climate Fund as a sustainable partner. Because Fair Climate Fund encourages local farming communities not only to capture CO2 from the air with their activities, but also to protect and develop their vulnerable habitat – including against the effects of climate change. In Burkina Faso, for example, we support the Birds, Bees Business project with the purchase of Fairtrade® GoldStandard® carbon credits. In this way, we offset our CO2 emissions 1-to-1. So at the same time, this investment is also a tool to reduce the effects of climate change in the short and long term.

Fair Climate Fund maintains strict conditions for its sustainable development projects. Each project must be sustainable, fair and transparent. These strict conditions lead to proven results. That’s why we at Recoll can guarantee that cartridges from RecycleClub are actually 100% CO2 neutral.

Working together to raise awareness

At Recoll, we don’t just take responsibility for every link in our own production process. We go beyond simply reducing our carbon footprint. That’s why we consciously work closely with cartridge vendors: chain stores and retailers. Collecting and reusing more cartridges concerns our entire industry. Together, we can address this part of the resource issue. With our collection and promotional materials, you can make your customers aware of the raw materials issue and their influence on it. In the end, many small steps add up to a big milestone.

Join Recoll, too!

The more empty cartridges are available, the more remanufactured ink cartridges will enter the market. That’s an attractive prospect. For you, too, because the margin on refilled cartridges is higher. And even without that extra yield: if the option exists to use precious resources sparingly, you take advantage of it, right?

Sustainable business
Recoll handles everything around collection
Earn some extra with surrendered ink cartridges

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Questions? Get in touch with us!