printer cartridge recycling

Question

What should I do with my Samsung ML-1640? I see on the internet that toners may be incompatible with printers and Samsung "protects" us from bad quality by expiring their cartridges electronically (they stop working after a number of pages printed). What should I do with my cartridges? I live in Estonia.

All green people know that the first danger to the Earth is PLASTIC. I read this in the cartridge recycle article also:

That's hundreds of millions of cartridges that end up in landfills every year, made with plastics that can take at least 1,000 years to decompose. Not a good thing.

Which arguments would ecology activists give, if capitalists invented a rapidly decomposable plastic? The main danger would be eliminated, right?

PS1 I have elicited how they collect the used cartridges. But it is only available in the UK. I still do not know what to do in Estonia.

PS2 I have discovered a couple of local companies, that refill cartridges: refill.ee, kassetitankla.ee, odavprint.eu and abiprint.ee. Refilling costs 20 EUR (+6 EUR for single-time chip reprogramming). Though, I can find new cartridges for this price. The last company also buys the empty cartridges, though there is no Samsung 1640 among the accepted particles. But in general refilling is 2x cheaper (25 vs 55 EUR).

I am not opposed if anybody converts this question to a wiki, adding options in their region or adds more answers.

Answer 1

The Samsung recycling website indicates that in Estonia their printer cartridge recycling is handled by their distributors. Call or e-mail Samsung and ask who their distributor is in your area and whether that distributor will take your used cartridges back for recycling.

Answer 2

1. There is a work around for "expired" printer cartridges! Canon and HP printers and their cartridges use the same excuse for the owner to have to go out and buy new ones by a certain date. More than likely there is absolutely nothing wrong with the ink. Doing anything but using them would be a waste on many levels. It has been my experience that when I installed an unopened but expired (date is listed on the packaging) cartridge in either an HP or a Canon printer, it would recognize the date and refuse the cartridge (these companies seemingly think of everything). This sounds like what your printer is doing after limited use.

Work around to use expired cartridges in your printer: Your printer has a time and date which you can change on its settings. Simply set the date back to before the expiration date of your cartridges. This works with Canon and HP printers and more than likely any other Brand. There it is, you have worked around it!

2. There are re-fill kits you can buy for your cartridge. I have never tried this, it seems as though it could be messy if you're not careful. There is a re-toner store that can be found all around (in the united states) called cartridgeworld.com. This saves you money as it is at least 50% the cost.

3. There is a program called PretonSaver Home Edition that saves your ink by decreasing the pixels in size or number without it being noticeable. I got it free but can only find a 14 day free trial on cnet.com downloads. I would guess I'm able to print about double what I would without this. I don't remember how I came about getting it free maybe it was giveawayoftheday.com's site which offered it up one day?

Good Luck on getting the expired cartridges to print until they are out of ink!