Each of these is worth 3 bucks at most office supply stores and while some of them limit you to three cartridges per purchase here's how you can manipulate that:
Office Depot recycles electonics. Old PC's, printers, monitors, etc. They ask that you buy the box(es) to put them in (small $5, medium $10, large $10) but that (they claim) covers their shipping costs.
So I walk in to the Medford Office Depot with 5 used-up ink cartridges and a $3 coupon from an earlier cartridge trade (they'll take as many as you give them but only 3 can apply to a purchase, they give you a $3 coupon for the remaining ones).
In the back of my car I brought an old PC, a busted printer, two bad keyboards, and a box-full of old speakers, and other accessories.
The clerk suggests I apply 3 of my cartridges ($9) toward the $10 medium box and the other two cartridges + my $3 coupon toward a second medium box for a total net cost to me of $2.
Then he grabs a shopping cart, goes out to our car, and loads up all my stuff. After putting it all into the boxes and filling out the forms himself, he asks me to sign and I'm gone.
Maybe 15 minutes but I have responsibly disposed of things I'd have to wait months to do locally.
For 2 bucks.
footnote: We just replaced a printer (you can't repair them these days, not only are parts unavailable but the labor cost may approach the cost of a new one.....)and noticed the black ink cartridge seemed pretty small compared to the old one. Sure enough, the defunct printer used a 40 ml cartridge which I used to buy for $15 (remanufactured, from PrintPal.com in Medford) and the new one has a 10 ml cartridge which costs, yup you got it, $13.95. One-fourth the capacity, one buck less. Why do I suspect a plan here?
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