Reducing and recycling printing waste

You can reduce your operating costs by minimising the amount of waste that you produce.  When you have done everything you can to reduce the quantity of waste that you produce, investigate whether your waste can be reused or recycled rather than disposing of it to landfill or incinerator.

You must comply with your duty of care for waste.  Materials that you are going to recycle are still considered to be waste materials until they are fully recovered.

Good practice

Speak to your suppliers about providing materials in containers and packaging that can be returned to them for reuse.

Check if your supplier will take back empty printer and photocopier cartridges for reuse.  Alternatively your local council may be able to advise you about businesses that can recycle used ink or toner cartridges for you.

Look at your processes and see if you can reduce the amount of materials that you use.  For example, do you really need to do several trial prints or can you rely on what you see on the computer screen?

Reuse paper whenever possible.  This will  reduce disposal costs.  For example if you are a publisher, use both sides of paper for trial printing, reuse or send back customers' floppy disks and minimise paste-up work.

Waste materials from printing, publishing, print finishing and binding that you can recycle include:

  • paper
  • printer and photocopier cartridges
  • solvents
  • silver halides
  • cardboard and other packaging materials.

You can find businesses that will recycle your waste by contacting your local council or by searching the waste directory.