550,000 pounds of ocean bound plastic materials were turned into recycled ink cartridges.
Humans are producing 20 million plastic bottles a second and a large portion of these bottles end up on the shorelines and in waterways, contributing to an estimated 8 million tonnes of plastic waste spilling into our oceans each year.
In fact, research by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation estimates that by 2050, there will be more plastic, by weight, than fish in the ocean resulting in serious damage to the ecosystem, sea creatures and habitat. While we as consumers can take concerted efforts to reduce using these bottles, corporate’s are required to step in if we want bigger impacts. One such initiative is from HP.
The largest printer company is the world has just managed to prevent 12 million plastic bottles from entering the ocean, when it collected them from Haiti and up-cycled them into ink cartridges. This milestone comes after two years of work joining the First Mile Coalition to clean up plastic waste and create economic opportunity for the people of Haiti. The poorest poorest country in the western hemisphere continues to recover from a catastrophic 7.0 earthquake that hit the country in 2010.,Because proper disposal methods aren’t in place, plastic bottles litter the country’s land, canals, and shoreline—eventually finding their way into the Caribbean Sea.
HP partnered with Thread International and the First Mile Coalition on a program that turns plastic bottles collected into recycled plastic that is used to produce its ink cartridges.
Through 2017 HP produced more than 3.8 billion Original HP ink and toner cartridges using recycled plastic from more than 784 million recovered cartridges, 86 million apparel hangers, and 4 billion plastic bottles. More than 80 percent of its cartridges contain 45-70% recycled content, and all toner cartridges (excluding toner bottles) now contain 5-38% recycled content.
