HP Cartridge Recycling: The Cruel Reality

After writing the post “Inconsistency of reality in advertising of original HP cartridges”, I was able to contact Sergey Troubleseller , the author of the video, which I used to attract attention. It turned out that this video demonstrates the actual procedure for the destruction of cartridges for the HP free recycling program. I duplicate this video here:

When crushing the cartridges in the crushing and screening complex an explosion occurred due to the fine toner (powder) and as a result - a fire

Here's what Sergey told and showed me:

Author's style, punctuation and spelling saved at 99%.

This epic began more than three years ago - since the concern in which I worked concluded a global contract for recycling cartridges with HP, the management in Russia had the idea to recycle cartridges here too.


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Big bosses from HP appeared in our production. I showed them the process of recycling and disposing of office equipment, poked my nose into the barrels in which the cartridges that had been pulled out of printers and copiers were stored. Pulling out one HP cartridge, I said - HP did not pay for these cartridges. Bosses looked at the technical equipment and left.
A few months later a contract was signed in Russia. As far as I understand, HP could not predict either the amount of recycling or the money they could spend on it - it was a purely image solution - they said they launched a project in Russia.



HP decided to work through a shipping company delivering cartridges to us. Well, and soon we scored a pile of 60 tons of cartridges. Well, to understand the volume, we can say that good scrap metal is collected in the car about 60 tons. So we had about 5 carriages of cartridges. Well, after the accumulation of this party, it was decided to crush on a large crusher. To crush and not caulk brains - 20 tons per hour and in three hours we will cope with these volumes, we will pull out useful, and we will take tails to the landfill. My attempts to tell that the dust explosive drowned in the flow of clicking on the calculators and calculating profits. Well, I said, and the next day I was wiping my tears, looking at the video of the crusher explosion.



I must say that we considered the issue of recycling by environmentalists comprehensively. They took samples of toner cartridges, milled and sent to the laboratory to assign a hazard class. So, it turned out that the cartridge has a hazard class - 5, that the ground cartridge has a hazard class - 5, identical with the PET bottle thrown into the bushes.
But after the explosion and the search for the guilty came the need to do something with the cartridges. Well, I was chosen to solve this problem. For two days I sat and thought. On the third, I took the cartridges, the laboratory heating stove, and began to bake the cartridges. Well, naturally, like pies. 5, 10, 15 minutes, etc. at 200 degrees Celsius. Having gutted the baked, it was found out that at a certain stage the powder in the cartridges is sintered and turned into coal. A stove for baking pies was bought and, as a solution, delivered to a crusher. These were hard times - we baked and crushed as much as we could.



And then on the tail of the HP came RPN - Rosprirodnadzor. And showered him with questions different and unpleasant. And twisted / censored / RPN as follows - why doesn’t your transport company have a license to transport hazardous waste? / censored / , mon ami. All of the waste passports shown and other laboratory tests of the on-load tap-changer responded - well, this is waste, which means we need a license to transport waste. And the case went out.



Nevertheless, the work in the direction of recycling cartridges did not stop - we tested laboratory ink cartridges and found out that this is already the 4th class of danger and we need to come up with something more complicated than crushing.
General efforts and new requirements from HP have developed a new scheme for processing cartridges - crushing on a low-speed grinder (because it turned out that the cartridges are made mostly of polystyrene and emit dangerous styrene when heated). Separation of dust on the vibrating table and the release of plastic scrap and sending them to incineration, followed by disposal of ash - the desire for zero waste.



And here everything was settled with the legislation and technological schemes and HP froze. No, he did not turn on the back, he froze. Apparently they figured out that no one pressed them about responsibility for destruction , but on the contrary, if they wanted to organize a processing scheme, they came and shook. Again - recycling is expensive and troublesome. I think they appreciated the costs and took into account the absence of risks for non-utilization and decided to live in Russia calmly for now .

PS Sergey hinted that he can tell many more interesting stories about how the technique dies.
UPD Now Sergey is with us: ~ troubleseller