Lexmark starts ink jet cartridge recycling here
by Eric Jackson

Working on a computer has this aura of cleanliness about it, an association with "green" post-industrial jobs. However, the European Greens and others have been campaigning for years to clean up aspects of the computer industry, in the manufacturing phase including toxic chemicals used in the etching of chips and manufacture of plastic components, to toxic heavy metals in the circuitry; to packaging material issues in the transportation and sale phases; and down to the problems of what to do with discarded computers or components. Partly under pressure from jurisdictions with advanced or advancing environmental regulations, the most sophisticated companies in the computer sector are responding to the challenge, cleaning up their acts, and making their responsible corporate behavior a selling point.

That trend has come to Panama with Lexmark, a Fortune 500 multinational based in Lexington, Kentucky, which was founded in 1991 when IBM spun off some of its accessory manufacturing functions. Lexmarks makes printers and copiers under its own brand name and for customers like Dell, and ink cartridges for use in its own and other companies' machines.

The full extent of the environmental problem with ink cartridges is known only by the extrapolation of lab experiment results. The plastics used in them have not existed nearly long enough to biodegrade in a natural setting. It is believed from experiments that it would take around 300 years for these plastics to rot away in a landfill.

That makes the throwaway culture in ink cartridges ecologically unsustainable, and to the extent that the plastics now used for the inserts have some practical quality to recommend their continued use, recycling or reuse are the intuitive answers. Cottage industry reuse does exist, and turns out to be a great way to destroy one's computer printer when inks that clog printer jets are injected into old cartridges, which are then reused.

And why would a big multinational want to cede part of its business to cartridge refillers, anyway?

So Lexmark has taken on a greenish hue and begun to recycle their ink cartridges. According to the company they have begun an international cartridge recycling program which they say has kept nearly 67,000 tons of the things out of landfills and returned them to the company for recycling or reuse (mostly disassembly and recycling of the component materials).

That program has now been extended to Panama through an alliance with the Cinemark movie theater chain that's based in Plano, Texas and has locations in 12 Latin American countries as well as in the USA.

Does your printer use Lexmark ink cartridges? Don't throw your empties away. Take them to the recycling bins that are located at the Cinemark theaters at the Albrook Mall or the Los Pueblos shopping center.