Cartridges (at least latex) get recycled. HP re uses them.- it's cheaper for them to reuse than to buy a new one, so it's in their interest to. Same with the gs3 Epson inks, I know Epson reuses there's as well - I had a family.member that worked at staples.when they just started their recycle program... They'd sort all the cartridges and send them back to the vendor for some $$. All Epson's would goto Epson, and canon goes to canon, etc - certain ones would get thrown out... I believe the cartridges with print heads on them. I don't know for sure what they did with commercial ones... So maybe they garbage them, but I doubt it.
And if you don't trust that - all the aftermarket ink suppliers will buy used ones off of you, because they re use them as well. They usually give you credit for sending them in.
HP will send you a free Purolator label to ship back as many, or as little as you want. We usually wait until we get about 50 and send them back - they don't pay you for them of course, but at least they'll pay for shipping so you just dump them all into a box and print a label.. very low effort.
HP now uses cardboard containers... So we break them down and recycle them with our cardboard.
Epsons new resin printer uses foil bags.
Seems like all the newer printers are going to more environmentally friendly options out of the gate.
Over here... If they catch you throwing them away it's a huge fine. Every so often there's someone standing there as our big 40 ft bin gets dumped at the waste station to make sure we're not dumping stuff we shouldn't be... We got dinged $300 once because someone threw away an old mattress...
I doubt they'd find an ink cart, especially if it was put in a black bag first.... But all the ink vendors we use have easy returns, so we don't bother. Our vanguard ink bottles we just rinse out and bring to the plastic recyclers once a year with all our vinyl cores, or when we have a full skid of vinyl cores - they take it for free and are 5 mins away.
Maybe they just garbage them, but at least we "try" to do our part in reducing waste, in an industry where a ton of plastic waste is produced.
I don't go out of my way to buy now free vinyl or anything. But when I pay per lb for garbage that they hall away, why not spend 2 mins and ship them for free or recycle them for free when there's a recycling plant every 5 blocks in our city! It may onlymcost a couple of cents in weight... But the amount of ink we go through is crazy, it's probably a whole 20 ft bin every year, plastic cores probably 4
5 20 ft bins - that's a few hundred bucks each bin in savings just by recycling. If you go through a few carts a month I can see it not being worth the hassle.