TECHNOLOGY : Toshiba Tackles Toner Cartridge Recycling

Each year, Irvine-based Toshiba ships about 800,000 toner cartridges across the country, where they are plugged into printers and copiers, used up, and thrown out. From there, the plastic cartridges probably end up in local landfills, where they will sit until future generations examine them to learn how wasteful their ancestors were.

Toshiba decided there was a better way. The company recently started shipping United Parcel Service labels with every carton of toner cartridges. When customers are done with the cartridges, they can load them back into the carton, slap the label on, and send them to a recycling center in North Dakota. And it doesn’t cost the customer a dime.

At the recycling center, near Toshiba’s toner plant, the cartridges are ground down into plastic that can be used again. “Possibly, [the plastic] will end up back in our cartridges,” said Danielle Coulson, senior product manager at Toshiba.

The UPS labels cost $3 apiece, but Toshiba hasn’t raised its prices for toner cartridges, she said. When asked how many customers are expected to participate in the program, Coulson wasn’t optimistic.

“We’re thinking it’s going to be under 20%,” she said.

By Greg Miller, who covers high technology for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-7830 and at greg.miller@latimes.com.