ink jet cartridges revisited

Posted January 6th, 2008 by Lucys Mom

GDRNT Fundraising

ok, i think i'm confused.
can we recycle ink jet cartridges for money? i thought that's what it was and then i thought i read that it was something else.
i print a lot on my ink jet and have about 25 cartridges sitting here. if we can get money for them, i'm donating, if not, then i'm tossing! it's that clean out mode i'm in now.
thanks
laura

Cell phones - not ink cartridges...yet

On January 6th, 2008 jamie says:

A lot of people think we're recycling ink cartridges, but we're not. Right now we're only working with phones.

Here's why (copied and pasted from an email I sent to someone on this topic a while back)...

"I first started researching phone recycling companies two years ago and I was disgusted. There were soooo many hoops to jump through…you couldn’t send them a phone that wasn’t on their approved list (and you had to go through 15 pages of a spreadsheet with tiny serial numbers to make sure your phone matched), if you sent a phone that wasn’t approved you were charged (a minimal amount like .02, but still). Plus, all the services I investigated would charge for nonworking or damaged phones. I nearly cried sitting in front of a box of more than 100 phones knowing that I would have to check each one against the spread sheet and make sure it worked. Oh it was awful.

That’s when I found GRC Wireless Recycling (http://www.grcrecycling.com/). They take ANY phone – regardless of maker or condition – and they pay us for them all. Of course the newer the phone, the more money we get (we once got $30 for a new Razr), and most of the phones we get only bring in a buck or two – but even the most damaged phone gets us .50, which is better than us having to pay them. I inventoried the entire contents of the first three shipments I sent to them because I was afraid they were a scam – but the always send an itemized receipt with each phone and how much they paid us for it and their numbers matched mine each time so I’m not as worried any more. I’ll probably always do spot checks, but I don’t feel I have to do it on each shipment anymore. Plus, they pay for shipping by supplying pre-paid fedex mailing labels (I’m sure most recycling programs do this now, but they didn’t in the past)."

What does this have to do with ink? Well, most companies take ink cartridges AND cell phones. GRC only handles phones. I was so spent from my search to find the right cell phone recycler that I put the cartridges on the back burner. Problem is, I haven't had a spare minute to sit down and start the search for a trustworthy company and it's doubtful I'll be able to do any searching in the next month or so as we work on the website.

I would be a very happy fundraising chairman if someone would like to pick up my sloppy leftovers and investigate companies recycling cartridges, though!

jamie