The Five R’s
- REFUSE to purchase environmentally burdensome materials
- REDUCE waste materials
- REUSE waste material without processing
- REFORM waste material
- RECYCLE waste material as new resources
The above lesson for today was provided, without additional charges or user processing, by the manufacturer of our home laser printer.
I don’t mean to be cynical, but it came in a box holding another half-container supporting my newest toner cartridge. This was sealed in an aluminized plastic envelope, and there were three copies of the installation instruction paper, as well as a sheet with the above lesson for today. The only reduction was on the Fedex label, that contained both an American and a Canadian section. The US instructions request the user to discard the Canada sticker, while the inverse has us applying our sticker over the US version.
Meanwhile, the toner cartridge is roughly one kilogram of mixed plastics and metals that would require a certain measurable quantity of energy to be 5Red. Oh well, at least I have a shredder to destroy the pages we print, and that stuff is acceptable to the local recycling people, as long as I don’t soak it beforehand in any noxious chemicals. The only thing missing is the wish that I not eat the toner powder – no, wait, I think that’s in the instruction manual that came with our printer. Technology. The bright side is that the toner cartridge only cost 70% of the original printer price.
