Printer cartridge recycling has been a long-standing issue for the print channel, especially with increasing legislation and export restrictions. But now there is an effective and provable solution from WBM that ensures cartridges are compliantly recycled.
Printer cartridge recycling has traditionally been difficult to achieve due to the contaminants contained within them. With EU and UK regulations increasing pressure to recycle more, this is a challenge for the industry – but one business has come up with an effective solution.
For many years, printer cartridges were simply thrown out in general waste, but the advent of the WEEE regulations some years ago changed that. No longer could cartridges be simply thrown away, there had to be responsibility to recycle them.
But this presented problems, as James O’Connor from WBM notes. “There are specialist WEEE waste companies set up that handle all kinds of electronics waste, but they often refuse printer cartridge waste because it can have a contaminant – toner powder,” he explains. “The biggest challenge for any recycling is the contamination of the waste, and the moment you put a printer cartridge in the mix of waste, the powder contaminates everything else.”
Problem solving
This posed a significant problem for the industry – but for James, it also presented an opportunity. In 2015, James became co-owner and managing director of WBM, with the goal of creating a unique solution for recycling printer consumables. “My business partner and I had a lot of knowledge about the printer consumables industry and the environmental regulations, and we could see there was a need for a solution for printer consumables waste in the UK,” he says.
“We knew there needed to be a specialised solution for recycling this contaminated waste. We looked at what was available in Europe and generally the solutions were huge shredding machines, where bulk waste is tipped into a large hopper and everything gets smashed together and the result is a load of mixed contaminated shredded plastics and metals. Unless you make a very big investment and install machinery to then separate and clean all that shredded plastics and metals and can extract all that toner powder, you’re simply left with a mixture of contaminated materials that cannot be reused and must be incinerated.”
Another major challenge with that process is the explosion risk. “When you throw a load of printer cartridges, with plastics and metals, into a huge machine to be shredded by metal teeth, you’re mixing very fine toner powder dust as well and, like flour for example, it’s an explosion risk with even just the smallest of sparks,” James says.
“We didn’t want to go down that road, so we developed our own way of extracting the toner powder safely first and produce the clean separated plastic that can be easily granulated with very little risk. The HSE guidelines also emphasise the importance of removing contaminants before processing for safety and compliance.”
James says WBM spent several years developing the solution, which included adapting equipment to its own needs. “We had to customise machines and make our own way of doing things to extract the toner powder and then sort and separate the plastics and metals.”
Once the solution had been established and proved, the next task was to scale and add volume. WBM targeted aftermarket distributors, partners and service providers to offer them this recycling solution. “Basically, we grew from there,” says James.
Desirable to essential
James adds that WBM has been helped by recycling moving from desirable to essential in recent years. “Before 2020, not many organisations were willing to pay for that service and solution,” he says. “But since then, the market has shifted and the regulations have changed, and now for most public sector tenders and most schools, businesses and health centres, recycling and sustainability is an essential, so we have pushed into those markets.”
In addition, regulations for manufacturers have changed, ensuring they take more responsibility for waste produced by their printers and consumables, James adds. “We’ve now got demand for the OEM to have an enhanced solution in place,” he says. “They’re focused on collecting their products back for reuse, while ensuring anything that can’t be reused goes for recycling.”
This meant that demand for WBM’s solution was growing, so the company had to develop a service solution to support that most effectively and efficiently. “We developed online portals that customers could use to request a box, request a collection, download the environmental documents and we do the front-end service solutions to get the cartridges back here,” he says.
James adds that WBM also provides a sorting solution for manufacturers, whether their products can be reused or recycled.
“Our UK-based facility and solution reduces the need for exporting waste,” he says. “We’ve got the data, we’ve got the sorting, we’ve got the processes, and we’ve got a solution for the end of life. It’s not just simply getting rid of waste, it is a process to recover and deliver reuse value for the products and materials.”
WBM now provides various programmes, whether on behalf of individual OEM partners, aftermarket distributors or independent multi-brand solutions, like its Circular Planet programme, where customers can have one box for multiple brands. “It’s quite common for end users to have multi-branded fleets, so they need a solution where they can put multiple brands in the same box,” says James. “They don’t want several different boxes to put their different cartridges into.”
Proof
Another key to WBM’s success is that it provides proof that cartridges are recycled. Proof of recycling is important as many companies want this now as they work to their own ESG targets or must provide proof of their sustainability activities as part of bidding processes. Some documents used in the process, such as waste transfer notes, only prove that waste has been picked up by a company with a waste carrier licence and taken away, but doesn’t prove what happened after that, James notes.
“For every collection we make, for all recycling that we do, our customers get a waste transfer note and a certificate of recycling; that’s not a legal requirement, but it is our signed declaration to say exactly what we’ve done with their material, whether it’s gone for reuse or for recovery, and that it’s not gone to landfill,” he says.
“Our customers don’t want buzzwords about sustainability, they want tangible proof. They want traceability and a partner they can trust.”
Signing up to a recycling solution is easy. In addition to the individual OEM programmes, www.print-recycle.com and www.circular-planet.co.uk offer customers a multi-brand return solution. “Users can go to the chosen portal, sign up, request recycling boxes and request a collection,” explains James. “Circular Planet is a totally free service for returning genuine (non-compatible) products from participating OEMs. Our chargeable Print-Recycle solution is a true ‘one-box-for-all’ programme, which allows customers to return any brand, manufacturer and model of all printer consumables.”
Future
James is excited about the future for WBM, and has plans to further develop the business, focusing on return logistics solutions and increasing the use of technology as it continues to grow. “To scale we’ve got to integrate AI and semi-automation, as well as cobots – mechanical arms and grips and things like that, which work alongside a human to do some of the processing – so that instead of having to do one cartridge at a time, we can do 10 or 20.”
Data and analytics will also be important, James adds. “A key focus in business ESG targets is to report on what they have recycled; and for the report to mean anything, they’ve got to have accurate data. With WBM, customers get that data and that certificate of recycling, which tells users the weight and the percentage breakdown of how that material was recycled, which can then be included in their reporting.”
This means WBM has huge potential to develop in the coming years as regulations continue to tighten and sustainability drives decisions. “Our growth year-on-year is over 67%, in what is often perceived to be a declining industry,” says James. “Our solution stands us apart; we’re not competing with other recyclers, we’re competing with landfill, and that gives us plenty of opportunity to keep growing.”
