Friday, June 19, 2009

New England Landfills Thank ELS!

What did our customers ever do for New England’s landfills?

Expert Laser Services customers have directly contributed to the duration of the landfills, not only in their own local towns, but also in Expert Laser’s home town of Southbridge as well. Within the decade the Southbridge landfill is expected to be one of only 8 active in Massachusetts receiving municipal solid waste! The town is quite proud of that fact, and Expert Laser’s customers can share in that pride. Each customer does their part to reclaim reusable materials, lessoning the impact on our landfill. Folks often wonder whether they really make any difference. Well ...

Their efforts made a difference.


The issue is laser toner cartridges. Hundreds of millions of cartridges
go into dumps every year ... and the total is growing by about 12% annually! Imagine literal mountains of black, non-biodegradable, hard plastic cartridges. Well, over the past 19 years our managed print services customers are directly responsible for keeping between 100,000 and a quarter million cartridges out of our respective landfills! Since they require literally hundreds of years to decompose, even our great grandkids will appreciate it!

Most dumps quickly begin looking like ... well, dumps.


But the photo on the front panel is an actual picture of the Town Landfill in
Southbridge, so you know that someone’s making a difference. At Expert Laser’s Southbridge plant we remanufacture about 1,000 cartridges per month. All parts are reused first and remanufactured as needed. Boxes, cardboard, packaging materials—everything is reclaimed as much as possible.

How “green” are we, really?


With O.E.M. manufacturers the routine is that cartridge cores are never brokendown
completely. They are re-used most often just once, then discarded. Think about that: they are reused once only; it’s all done overseas saving THEIR landfills, with the work done by their workers driving THEIR economy. With Expert Laser your toner might actually rival the 9 lives of your favorite tabby! Cartridges will be remanufactured up to 8 or 10 times before finally reaching our “junkpile.” Of course, with Expert Laser even then the plastic is not just “dumped!” We have identified recycling resources for even the base cores and “non-recyclable” plastic tubes. The work is done right here in Massachusetts at our plant, bolstering our own economy. What’s more, the bottom line environmentally is that with your help we are keeping at least ...

12,000 toner cartridges per year out of our landfills!


One final shocker: Each cartridge equates chemically to two quarts of oil. So our
customers are enabling us to keep the equivalent of 6,000 gallons of oil per year out of our precious landfills!

6,000 gallons of oil in our dumps is not a pretty sight.


Think about the difference that simply reusing cores makes:
• Each and every new laser toner cartridge requires about two quarts of oil to manufacture! • Worldwide about 70% of used cartridges are simply trashed. • Every discarded cartridge adds about 3-1/2 pounds of solid waste to our dumps! • Every cartridge takes up to 450 years to decompose! • Reusing cores and remanufacturing cartridges cuts these numbers by up to 80%!

Can you imagine a mountain of 100,000 toner cartridges!?


Expert Laser Services is doing even more to make those mountains of cartridges into environmentally-friendly “molehills.” In co-operation with a regional environmental leader, Expert Laser Services has developed a system whereby we recycle virtually every piece of a toner cartridge.

Doesn’t “environment-friendly” imply “poor quality”?


In the early days of the recycling movement, businesses often had to settle for lesser quality if they wanted to use “green” products. That was never the case with Expert Laser Services. From our inception, top quality has been the top priority. The result was the development of a detailed and unique remanufacturing process. At our Southbridge plant every cartridge we receive undergoes a rigorous 7-step process of remanufacture before being boxed and loaded out to our trucks for another round of business productivity:


1. Our technicians do a complete disassembly of each cartridge.


2. Our eyes and hands examine each component—removing, inspecting, and either cleaning or
replacing parts as necessary.

3. Left-over toner is completely purged (never re-used) in our state-of-the-art suction
workstations, pulling the spent toner not into the air but into secure disposal units.

4. The cartridge’s toner hopper is refilled, matching original equipment manufacturer (O.E.M.) specifications.

5. Each refilled cartridge is professionally reassembled.

6. The exterior of each cartridge is wiped clean and relabeled as needed.

7. Every cartridge is print-tested for quality then repackaged (we
even utilize reused or recycled packing materials).

Ultimately every customer using our cartridges benefits from fewer defects, and, at the same time, we all benefit! We even save money! That’s a rare bonus—dramatically cutting overall expenses while doing the right thing. It’s the reality for Expert Laser’s customers. Our managed print services customers routinely pay less than 2¢ per print including toner, routine maintenance, emergency service—everything. Sound like the best of both worlds to you? Well, that’s exactly what we offer.

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