On Friday, February 25th, we attended The Institute for Sustainable Development’s annual awards banquet. We were thrilled to learn that Laser Plus was selected to receive the 2011 Green Plus Sustainable Small Business of the Year. Just to be chosen a finalist is an honor as it means that we demonstrated leadership in balancing business, community and environmental best practices for innovation in sustainability.
In addition to this win, we want to thank our loyal supporters for voting for us in The Institute for Sustainable Development’s People’s Choice Award. We are thrilled to announce that we garnered enough votes from our community to win this award as well.
We look forward to finding new ways to help organizations in our community become more sustainable and reduce their environmental footprint.
Why do we bother talking about landfills when we’re selling printer cartridges and computer and printer services? Because every small “green” thing we all can do makes a difference.
For example, using recycled printer cartridges saves the equivalent volume of an elephant in waste from landfills every week.
So, other than the tree-huggers, who cares about that?
As it turns out, a lot of people care because every community has a landfill that is a potential hazard to the health of its citizens.
Landfills can cause methane gas problems, other odors, smoke, dust, litter, pests; not to mention some of the sites that have been linked to cancers, leukemia and other deadly diseases. So, landfills are not an easy problem to deal with because of our hugely wasteful nation of consumers.
As noted in one Landfill blog, “Much more could be done to reduce and recycle the waste we produce and small changes can make a big difference. Recycling uses much less energy and raw materials than making new products. Please support recycling and practice it yourself.”
To that, I say “Amen” and would add that recycling printer cartridges through Laser Plus also supports the local business economy.
It’s time to go “green.” Mary
The following facts, taken from an article posted on Reuters.com by Cartridge World, are things that everyone should know before throwing those empty ink cartridges in the trash.
It takes about a gallon of oil to make a new toner cartridge.
A medium-sized business can use between 900 and 1,600 ink cartridges per year.
Cartridges take up to 450 years to decompose in a landfill.
Over 350 million cartridges are thrown out per year, and this number increases by 12% annually.
Almost 8 cartridges are thrown away per second in the U.S.
Every remanufactured cartridge saves nearly 3.5 pounds of solid waste from being deposited in landfills.
70-95% of used printer cartridges throughout the world are currently being thrown out.
In one year, if the world’s discarded cartridges were stacked end-to-end; they would circle the earth over three times.
So the next time your ink runs out help the environment and contact LaserPlusUSA to recycle the old cartridge and we can help with any other printing needs you have as well!
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