It's now September. How are your green goals for the year going? Yeah, me too.

So here's an idea. There are just four months left until the end of the year. I'm going to make a commitment to do one major recycling project every month:

September: Get in the habit of recycling my printer cartridges.

October: Recycle two old cellphones that are languishing at the bottom of some drawer.

November: Freecycle 10 items cluttering the basement.

December: Recycle two ancient computers I haven’t used in years.

Each month, I’ll report back on how the previous month's recycling project went and post information on how to do this month's project, starting today, with printer cartridge recycling.

Want to join me? Great, let's get started.

Recycling inkjet printer cartridges, of the kind most home printers use, has become incredibly straightforward. Many office supply stores, like Office Max and Office Depot, will take them. So will some drug stores, like Walgreens.

So there’s almost no excuse for not recycling your cartridges. It just takes:

• Creating a place in your home to collect your cartridges.
• Remembering to bring them with you when you do your errands.

If you’re looking for a little extra mad money, there are a slew of organizations that will actually pay you for your empties. But think hard before you invest time and energy in this route. The prices per cartridge vary from pennies to a dollar or so, skewing to the lower end of the scale. If I were to go this route, I'd probably net about 10 cents for each of the 20 or so cartridges I have piled up by the front door (my storage location). That’d be about $2—not nearly enough to make it worth my while to spend the time required to request their mailers, fill out their forms, trudge to the post office, and cash their checks. Which is why I’m happy to hand my cartridges over to the folks at the office supply store, gratis.

So, that’s it. My mission, which I choose to accept, is simply to toss those 20 or so cartridges into a bag and take them with me on my next office supply run. And then make a plan to do the same thing every three months or so, as the pile starts to stack up again.

How about you? Ready to take on some great green habits? Great! See you next month.

 

Photo credit: Robbie1

 

• Tags:
• recycling
• planet

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