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The Golden Pencil: The Freelance Writer’s Resource

Refillable Ink Cartridges? Yech!

by Anne Wayman on November 17th, 2005

As a freelance writer who has an inclination to recycle, the last time I bought ink for my printer I decided to order refillable ink cartridges. I’d tried this once before, maybe 100 years ago, just after I traded in my dot-matrix printer for some sort of ink jet model. I’d assumed, and you know what that makes me, that in the last decade or so the technology of getting ink into cartridges would have changed… and maybe it has, a whole smidgen.

So I finally mastered the art, after filling my black cartridge with blue ink… that is, I can refill a cartridge and only get ink on my fingers, not clear up to my elbows. Yesterday as I was injecting black ink into the proper cartridge I got to looking at all the gear required to do this. There’s the plastic bottle of ink with its plastic cap; the metal needle that has to be inserted in a plastic holder, both of which come in a protective plastic sleeve. Then there’s the big plastic screw gazeets (tech term there ;)) that, when twisted, drives the ink into the cartridge. Plus the plastic gloves they give you because they know… and the box the gear is shipped in, the box the gear is actually in and the box within the box full of plastic parts, and of course, a poorly written sheet of instructions.

I don’t know enough to figure it out, but I strongly suspect I’m using about twice as much material to be ecology sound and save a few pennies than if I just ordered refilled cartridges and returned the used ones for recycling in the handy, postage paid envelope they send me.

I’ll bet you can figure out what I’ll order next time.

Write well and often,

POSTED IN: Musings From A Freelance Writer

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