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SPONSORED: Small toner cartridges, big sustainability impact

Using imitation print and toner products can result in a 55 per cent larger carbon footprint

In many ways, sustainability is the critical subject of our era. From infrastructure, to ocean-bound plastics to how brands and companies are contributing to a greener planet - the eyes of the world are focused firmly on how we can maintain the health of the planet.

For your customers, this focus underscores an important truth: employees care about sustainability too. In an era of low unemployment, healthier and greener workplaces are not only key to the future of the planet, they help underpin your customers' employee retention in an increasingly competitive talent environment.

As a global brand HP understands the responsibility this carries, in supporting organisations in their efforts to become more sustainable. Our laser printer systems are rigorously engineered to meet stringent environmental guidelines. However, if users fail to use original HP toner cartridges and instead install underperforming and potentially damaging third-party imitations, there could be environmental repercussions.

Making Recycling Free & Easy for Customers

Imitation cartridges undercut your customers' sustainability efforts in multiple ways. For starters, sub-optimal cartridges perform relatively poorly. As a result, most companies must print up to 29 per cent more pages to achieve the desired results. More than wasting paper, that extra printing can use 40 per cent more energy and consume 54 per cent more fossil fuels. Ultimately, all this waste contributes to a 55 per cent larger carbon footprint.

What's more, 97 per cent of imitation cartridges end their lives in landfills as, unsurprisingly, most imitations manufacturers fail to collect their own products. HP has an altogether different approach, making recycling free and easy for your customers. For more than 27 years, across more than 50 countries and territories worldwide, customers have been recycling HP ink and toner cartridges for free through the HP Planet Partners programme.

Through our closed loop recycling process, HP ink and toner cartridges returned via the HP Planet Partners programme are reduced to raw materials, where they can be used to make new HP cartridges and other everyday products. At present, 100 per cent of HP toner cartridges and 80 per cent of HP ink cartridges contain recycled content.

Using these processes, HP has manufactured more than three billion ink and toner cartridges using more than 218 million pounds of recycled content material, including 784 million used HP cartridges and four billion plastic bottles.

Sustainability makes strong business sense Sustainability extends beyond efforts to protect our environment. Our supply chain responsibility programme works tirelessly across sectors touched by HP production to protect and empower workers' rights. In 2018, our collective efforts in environmental and workers' rights protection led to recognition on the Corporate Knights' Global 100 list of the 100 most sustainable corporations in the world for the second year in a row.

In a 2018 HP study of 3,000 office workers, 56 per cent of workers said they would be more likely to work at an employer that offers ways to practice sustainability at work. The fact that shareholders, too, are thinking more about sustainability than ever makes it impossible for businesses to ignore.

Now more than ever, the need for a sustainable future is clear. As your customers adopt initiatives to protect the environment for future generations, its critical to remind them to take into account those seemingly smaller choices that can have a great collective impact.

And sustainable choices are not only good for the planet in the future, they can help your customers to attract and retain a more competitive workforce today.