HP Grows “Closed Loop” Ink Cartridge Recycling

This follows HP’s achievement of manufacturing 1 billion ink cartridges that incorporate recycled plastic from HP’s “closed loop” ink cartridge recycling program.

HP’s growing collaboration with the Lavergne Group is the culmination of a twelve-year relationship focused on developing “closed loop” plastic resin solutions that meet the high quality standards required for Original HP ink cartridges. The Lavergne Group’s expansion in Vietnam provides additional capacity for HP to continue year-on-year increases in the volume of “closed loop” recycled plastic used in manufacturing Original HP ink cartridges.
The Lavergne Group’s new plant in Vietnam will facilitate regional qualification efforts, enabling future growth in the volume of Original HP Ink cartridges that can be manufactured using the “closed loop” recycling process.
The facility will also be closer to the manufacturing sites for HP Original Ink cartridges in Asia Pacific and local sources of recycled materials, which will provide an estimated six per cent reduction in the plastic carbon footprint when the facility is fully operational.

“We are excited to grow our collaboration with Lavergne in ‘closed loop’ ink cartridge recycling, which will help our customers who are using Original HP Ink reduce their impact on the environment,” said Annukka Dickens, Head of Environmental Management, Asia Pacific and Japan, HP. “This year, HP has achieved a truly significant milestone, with 1 billion Original HP Ink cartridges manufactured using the ‘closed loop’ recycling process.”

“We are proud to continue to work closely with HP, who demonstrates a strong commitment to the environment through continued recycling innovation that enables users of Original HP Ink to reduce their environmental impact,” said Mr Jean-Luc Lavergne, President, Lavergne Group.

Ink Cartridge Recycling Innovation Breakthroughs

• HP has achieved several innovation breakthroughs in ink cartridge recycling:  
•  HP introduced the industry’s first “closed loop” ink cartridge recycling process, combining plastic from post-consumer recycled Original HP Ink cartridges and other sources, such as recycled water and soda bottles, in the manufacturing of new Original HP Ink cartridges. More than 1 billion Original HP ink cartridges were manufactured with “closed loop” RPET plastic, since the program’s first cartridge was manufactured in the year 2005.
•  In 2009, HP expanded the “closed loop” plastic solution to polypropylene plastics, leveraging the knowledge gained from the RPET program.  Since the process’s inception, 20 million cartridges have been manufactured using plastic from the “closed loop” polypropylene process.
•  For HP ink cartridges that use recycled materials, up to 70% of the cartridge is made from recycled material.
• In 2010, HP and Lavergne co-developed an industry-first ink cartridge disassembly machine, which can separate the plastic, foam, ink and metal components of returned cartridges more effectively and recover a higher percentage of re-usable content. Based on the success of the development effort, this breakthrough equipment is currently being installed in multiple HP recycling facilities, enabling dramatic improvements in material recovery and simplifying recycling supply chain and processes.

HP’s continuous improvement in “closed loop” processes and recycling innovations over the past six years (2005-2010) to enhance ink cartridge collection, improve the ink cartridge disassembly process and to grow the volume of recycled plastic for ink cartridge manufacturing have led to further reductions in environmental impact. In 2010, the recycled plastic in Original HP Ink cartridges has up to a 33% smaller carbon footprint than the virgin plastic in Original HP Ink cartridges, even when accounting for the impact associated with collecting, transporting and processing used cartridges and plastic bottles.4 Additionally, the recycled plastic used in Original HP Ink cartridges requires 62% less fossil fuel to manufacture, transport and recycle, when compared with virgin plastic.

HP and Lavergne are currently engaged in ongoing development of recycled plastics involving multiple plastics types for use in a number of HP printing products.

Reducing Environmental Impact without Compromising Quality
Original HP Ink cartridges have been engineered to use up to 70% recycled material and still meet HP’s demanding standards for quality and reliability.3 This is in line with HP’s Design for Environment program, which ensures that environmental design goals are integrated into every product design, measuring Original HP cartridges’ performance in such areas as material efficiency, ease of recycling, packaging efficiency and reducing environmental impact.

Customers can also reduce environmental impact by reducing waste of paper, ink and energy from failed jobs or printer damage when using aftermarket alternatives such as refills:

• Customers can get twice as many prints with Original HP Ink than refilled cartridges.
• Original HP Ink cartridges tested also were found to have worked all the time, in contrast to 42% of refilled cartridges tested that were dead-on-arrival or failed prematurely.

Recycling Original HP print cartridges is made easy with the HP Planet Partners program, available in more than 50 countries and territories worldwide.7 Recycling efforts by customers and HP have kept 1.3 billion plastic bottles and more than 210 million HP ink cartridges out of landfills. In 2010, HP used 6,000 tonnes (13.6 million pounds) of recycled plastic from plastic bottles and Original HP ink cartridges recovered through the HP Planet Partners program to manufacture new Original HP ink cartridges. This is equivalent to keeping 340 tractor-trailer loads of plastic from going into landfills.

HP Australia
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