Sainsbury's criticised on tech recycling

Sainsbury's has been criticised as "misguided" for its choice of a corporate printer cartridge recycling scheme over more ecofriendly cartridge reuse.

The retailer has signed up to Hewlett Packard's Planet Partners corporate recycling scheme and may even extend it to customers, who would be given the option of dropping off spent cartridges for Sainsbury's to send away for recycling.

The HP partner scheme replaces a variety of take-back services that the grocery chain considered patchy at best, according to James McKechnie, Sainsbury's recycling and resource manager.

McKechnie said that since May, Sainsbury's had recycled 22 tonnes of cartridges via HP, representing a saving of around £30 to £40 per tonne. The supermarket expects to eventually dispose of around 91,000 tonnes per year.

But while the recycling scheme sounds ecofriendly it has been attacked by the cartridge refill industry, which claims that reuse is better for the environment and raises hundreds of thousands of pounds for charity.

"We are incredibly disappointed with Sainsbury's. It's a shame Sainsbury's chose HP as it is not the most environmentally sound method. Reuse is," said Laura Heywood, secretary of the UK Cartridge Recyclers Association.

"They could have looked at what [high street retailers] Staples or PC World do. They collect spent cartridges from consumers and channel them back to companies, which will refill them so they can be reused."

The move by Sainsbury's is indicative of the way the major inkjet cartridge original equipment manufacturers have clouded environmental issues to freeze out the refillable market, a popular fundraising option for charities, said Heywood.

"It will also be a blow to charities that can make hundreds of thousands a year from selling on the spent cartridges they have been given," she added.

But Richard Ford, HP's corporate account representative, defended the scheme.

He said it was environmentally sound, as returned cartridges are sorted, crushed and separated into their component parts and then burned for energy or used to make other products.

Ford added that since the scheme was started 12 years ago, HP and its partners have prevented 70.5 million kgs of cartridge waste being dumped in landfills across the world.