Semantic Werks

While Aldo may be an environmental nightmare, I must give respect to HP. We own a LaserJet 1018 (which is great, btw). The toner ran out the other day, so I picked up a new cartridge (95 bones!) to replace it. It comes in a cardboard box and bubble wrap. The cool thing is they include postage-paid address labels for the US and Canada. I took the old cartridge, repackaged it (the box is designed for re-use, with resealable tabs), and taped on the Canada Post label.  Then, while walking my dog at night, I dropped the whole thing in a mailbox for return.

As my wife pointed out, I’m not sure what they do with it when it gets back to the factory. They might ship them all to some developing-world country to be dumped in a trash heap. But HP gets big marks for making the whole process brain-dead simple. Being environmentally friendly seems to require that level of simplicity for people to change (guilty as charged!).

Before HP gets too much love, it should be noted that they deliberately sell the printer with a tiny amount of toner, forcing you to go buy more way too quickly. And I notice the Canadian toner prices are still much higher than the American prices, despite dollar parity. Next time I might investigate refilling the cartridge.