QPS celebrates five years of cartridge collections

GreenPrint

At a time when recycling is making headlines, Quality Print Services (QPS) is celebrating five years since the launch of its cartridge recycling scheme.

The company introduced the free programme for its customers in 2011 – long before the 5p carrier bag charge was introduced and campaigns began to call for coffee shop chains to recycle their cups.

The end to end cartridge recycling programme was developed in partnership with Nazdar to minimise the signage and graphics industry's generation of landfill waste and its environmental effects. QPS began collecting empties when delivering new ones or while visiting customers as part of its printer service support.

To further reduce road miles, the recycling process is kept local to QPS's headquarters in Burscough, Lancashire. Any remaining ink goes to a nearby solvent recovery centre while separated cartridge components are sent to a reprocessing plant in the north of the county, where they are ground down and reprocessed into clean chips for resale to UK plastics manufacturers.

In the past 12 months alone, QPS has collected around 3.5 tonnes of plastic cartridges and saved them from going to landfill.

As well as reducing their environmental impact, this means QPS's customers don't have to worry about disposing hazardous materials or finding space to store their empty cartridges as they build up.

‘Five years after launching our ink cartridge recycling programme we remain one of the only suppliers to offer this service to our customers,’ said director Chris Bailey. ‘More and more print buyers are demanding environmental action from their print providers and we can offer help in this area free of charge. What is more, our customers who sign up for the recycling programme will receive certification of their involvement, which can help support an application for ISO 14001.’