Reducing Printing Costs and Waste

We all want to reduce the impact of our actions on the environment and there are steps that you can take that will not only help but also cut your costs! Much of what you can do is common sense of course but maybe the following pointers might also help.

• The most dramatic ‘green’ saving is to use remanufactured inkjet cartridges. Not having to manufacture a new ‘case’ to hold the ink obviously saves natural resources.
• Use high capacity cartridges. These tend to be the same size ‘container’ but with more ink or laser toner inside. For HP these are labelled ‘X’ or ‘XL’. Other makes use different model numbers for the same cartridge- Dell and Lexmark for example. So you need to research and not just buy another to match the one that came with the machine! Or contact us for advice of course.
• Return your empty cartridges. Your supplier should take them back from you. Some suppliers, including ourselves, will actually pay for certain inkjet cartridges.
• Some printers use their low power consumption as a selling point. Check first whether or not they need to be left on all night because they take 20 minutes to warm up before you can print!
• Inkjet printers which use separate cartridges (as many as 8) have to use their ink to clean themselves more often. As much as 50% of some Epson printers’ ink is wasted. This goes into an overflow pad which, when full, stops the printer working. That can be in as little as 18 months. Take that cost into account.

Try these tricks to reduce the cost of printing;

Preview

Always preview a new document before printing– and check it!

Draft

Try printing at a lower resolution than normal. Especially good with new cartridges. The settings are in printers> preferences

Duplex

Print on both sides of the paper! In our office this is the default setting on our HP Officejet Pro. inkjet and Samsung laser.

Cartridge capacity

Don’t assume that what came with the printer is the one that should be used for ever. Get the Lexmark 35, not the 33. Buy the HP 2612X, not the 2612A

Change the font!

Believe it or not, Times New Roman uses 70% less ink than Tahoma!

Use regularly

Printers with separate ink tanks must not dry out. Use them every day to actually reduce your costs by keeping head cleaning to a minimum. These include Canon, Brother and Epson.

Click here to download our leaflet on Cost Reduction and Recycling