That empty cartridge in your drawer is a bigger deal than it looks. Hundreds of millions of ink and toner cartridges end up in landfills every year in North America alone, and only about 20–30% get recycled. The rest sit there for an estimated 450 to 1,000 years, slowly shedding microplastics while leftover ink and toner leach into soil and groundwater.

The good news: recycling a cartridge is free, easy, and in some cases puts money back in your pocket. Here's what actually happens to your empties — and the one option most guides skip.

Don't just toss it in the recycling bin

This is the most common mistake. Cartridges do NOT belong in curbside recycling. They're a mix of engineered plastics, metal parts, foam, and residual ink or toner powder that standard municipal sorting can't handle. Tossed in the blue bin, a cartridge either jams the machinery or gets pulled out and landfilled anyway.

They also don't belong in the trash. Beyond the centuries-long decomposition, a cracked cartridge in a garbage truck or landfill can leak residual ink into the surrounding environment.

What actually happens to a recycled cartridge

Two things, depending on condition:

1. Remanufacturing (the best outcome). A well-built cartridge body can be cleaned, fitted with new internal parts, refilled, and tested — then sold as a remanufactured cartridge. This can happen several times over one cartridge's life, and it uses far less energy and raw material than molding a new one from virgin plastic.

2. Material recovery. Cartridges too damaged for reuse get shredded and separated. By some industry estimates, up to 97% of a cartridge's constituent parts — plastics, metals — can be recovered and fed back into manufacturing.

Either way, the cartridge stays out of a landfill for centuries. That's the whole point.

Where to recycle: your actual options

Staples — Arguably the best deal for households. Their Easy Rewards program has historically given around 500 points (roughly $2.50) per recycled cartridge, capped at about 6 per month. Terms change, so confirm before you go — but it's the rare recycling program that pays you.

Best Buy — Free drop-off, no rewards, no account needed. Limited to a few items per household per day. Best when you're already running errands.

Office Depot / OfficeMax — Accepts cartridges with store rewards on qualifying ones; membership and monthly caps apply.

Manufacturer mail-back programs — HP (Planet Partners), Canon, Brother, Lexmark, and Xerox all run take-back programs, usually with free prepaid shipping labels. Some are toner-only or brand-specific, so check your manufacturer's site. HP's program alone claims over a billion cartridges recycled.

Mail-in buyback services — If you have empties of popular OEM toner models in good condition, buyback companies pay cash per cartridge — sometimes a few dollars each. Offices with volume do best here.

Schools and charities — Many run cartridge collection fundraisers. Your empties become someone else's budget.

The option nobody mentions: reuse beats recycling

Here's the honest hierarchy: reuse > recycling > trash. And the simplest form of reuse is buying a remanufactured cartridge in the first place.

Every remanufactured compatible cartridge on the market exists because someone's empty didn't go to a landfill — it went back into service. When you choose a quality remanufactured cartridge over a brand-new one, you're voting for that loop to continue. It's the same logic as buying refurbished electronics.

We wrote a full breakdown of how compatible and remanufactured cartridges compare to OEM on price, quality, and page yield: Compatible vs. OEM Toner: The Honest 2026 Breakdown

Before you recycle: is it actually empty?

About half of "dead" cartridges aren't dead. A faded print often means a clogged printhead or a printer that needs a cleaning cycle — not an empty cartridge. Print one of our free test pages first; it takes sixty seconds and shows whether the cartridge is truly spent or just needs maintenance. Recycling a half-full cartridge is its own kind of waste.

What about refilling it yourself?

Refill kits exist and they're cheap. The honest take: refilling is messy, results vary by model, and on some printers it can cause warranty headaches. For most people, the time and ink-stained hands aren't worth the savings versus a professionally remanufactured cartridge. If you enjoy tinkering, go for it — just know what you're signing up for.

Quick answers

Can I recycle any brand?
Retailer drop-offs (Staples, Best Buy, Office Depot) generally take any brand. Manufacturer programs usually take only their own.

Do I get money for recycling?
Sometimes. Staples rewards points and mail-in buyback programs pay; manufacturer mail-backs and Best Buy drop-offs don't. Nobody pays for damaged or off-brand empties nobody can reuse.

How should I store empties before recycling?
In a sealed bag or the original box, upright, away from heat. Toner powder is fine and messy — you don't want it loose in a drawer.

Is recycling really better than just buying new?
Remanufacturing a cartridge body uses a fraction of the energy and material of making one from scratch. And a cartridge kept in circulation is one less sitting in a landfill until the year 3000. So yes — by a wide margin.

Numbers cited (decomposition estimates, recycling rates, program terms) are industry estimates and change over time — treat them as the honest picture as of 2026, not gospel.