Am I overreacting?

Every time I buy printer ink, I get postage paid envelopes to send back the empty cartridges to “HP Planet Partners.” But after getting reamed for $20 – $25 per cartridge, I don’t really want to give anything to HP that will allow them to save money. My hatred of printer ink prices far outweighs any good I’d be doing for the Earth. I fill up the postage paid envelopes with trash, Halloween candy and mean notes instead.

And I am a fan of recycling. I recycle all my paper, cardboard and plastic. Today I stood in line at Fred Meyer for almost 20 minutes, just to recycle $2.00 worth of cans and bottles. But paying $20 for .24 ounces of ink makes me not care. And now they’re rigging their printers so you can’t even use competitor’s ink cartridges.

I need to find one of those kiosks that refills ink cartridges for half the price, if they still exist. I’m pretty sure there’s nowhere in Albany that does it, though.

5 comments

  • Not in Albany, but there is one in the OfficeMax in Corvallis. Thats not too far away is it?

  • Hey Brad,
    If I buy a pla shirt can I have a broken phreaking pen?
    -unclebob1992 at gmail dot com

  • HAY ARBIE…

    What kind of printer is it/what model cartridges?

  • It’s an HP Officejet 6210. The cartridges are HP 94 and 95. I’m going to look for a refill place when these new ones run out.

  • By the time a cartridge has run out of ink, it’s print heads are essentially destroyed. You see, an inkjet works by raising the voltage of a little print head, which then evaporates the ink, causing it to shoot onto the paper. Since relatively high current passes through these very small printing contacts, they destroy easily, which is why cartridges refilled never have the same quality as new carts.

    Laser printers are lower cost of ownership, since typically, photosensitive drums have a page cycle of 20,000 pages, and Toner is cheap. Look for an older laser printer that just needs a replacement drum/toner cart.

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