Think refill, not landfill

Posted by Matt

I recently posted about some options for saving money on printer ink, but just found yet another option that I'm pretty happy about. There is a tiny shop very near where I work called Island Inkjet that will refill your inkjet cartridges for you, with several benefits over the other methods I discussed.

Cost

• I had my HP #15 cartridge (black ink) refilled for $15.99. A replacement from HP.com would have cost $29.99.
• I had my HP #78 cartridge (color) refilled for $21.99. The HP replacement would have cost $34.95.

If you read my last post, you know that the least expensive option is still to refill your own cartridges, but convenience has a value, too.

Convenience

• I didn't have to deal with the mess
• The refilling process only took the experts a few minutes
• The refill tech also cleaned the print nozzle on the color cartridge, which I didn't even know was needed.

Expertise

Another thing that you don't get with DIY is the benefit of specialized knowledge and experience. The tech at the shop gave me the exciting news that our older black ink cartridge has twice the capacity of the current cartridges being sold by HP and that the older color cartridge has EIGHT times the capacity of the new ones. Also, they can be refilled up to ten times. I'm certainly glad I didn't recycle the used cartridges and just buy remanufactured ones!

Environment

The last point I have to make is hinted at by the title of this post, which I stole from a sign at Island Inkjet: refilling printer cartridges is a more environmentally friendly option than trashing them. Island Inkjet refilled 2 million cartridges last year, but that is only a small part of the 300 million that are tossed out annually. We can do better!

All in all, I was very satisfied with the process and would recommend this service to anyone.