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Mike Meadows is now a member of Zero Waste Northeast Ohio

Dec 1, 2009

Welcome Them!

Profile Information

Your organization: InkCycle

Your website: http://www.Inkcycle.com

What attracts you to the concept of zero waste?: InkCycle is attracted to the concept of zero waste for a number of reasons ranging from economic to environmental to competitiveness. Clearly, a reduction in waste can translate to a cost reduction or a series of cost reductions, thereby improving the financial performance of the organization. From the environmental perspective, we feel that as a US manufacturer, the more that we can do to improve our environmental footprint, the more attention we will attract from companies with shared values and business practices. In other words, moving towards zero waste will reduce our costs, improve our competitiveness and enhance stakeholder value. Pretty compelling reasons.

What is your organization doing to eliminate waste?: Our entire business model is based on taking spent ink and toner cartridges that otherwise would end up in a landfill and remanufacturing them so as to promote the environmental benefits of reusing before end of life recycling. However we go a step further. The realty of the situation is that you can only remanufacture an ink and toner cartridge so many times before it is no longer in a condition suitable for remanufacturing. With the majority of the end of life bulk materials being plastics, goes into a land fill. Not with InkCycle and their Grenk product line. It is the only "zero landfill" remanufactured ink and toner that documents and calculates the effect on the environment. All end-of-life components are accounted for with the goal of either reuse or recycling in very specific and accountable waste streams.
Operationally, we strive to consistently continue to improve our waste reduction activities. At present, these include:
Migration of vehicle fleet to hybrid technology.
Special parking spots for hybrid vehicles.
Processing of all of our manufacturing waste water.
Reuse of test paper used in the manufacturing process prior to end of life recycling.
"Print Less Campaign" to remind our employees and customers that we can all be part of the waste reduction process.
New product line in 2008 that uses only SFI box material.
Recycling containers throughout the facilities for paper, glass and metals. This is both for consumer and industrial waste.

What motivated you to join ZeroWasteNEO.org?: Learn best practices, Share resources, Network with others, Find potential clients

What do you need to learn to be able to take action towards Zero Waste?: Other best practices from different companies

Please describe your organization's waste reduction goals (i.e. zero waste by 2019).: Zero waste for our entire plant by 2012

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At 12:07pm on December 3, 2009, Annabel Khouri said…: Welcome Mike! Nice to see you on this site and glad to see the zero waste goal for your plant. It was nice to meet you in person in October. I'd like to learn more about this goal and how the network might be able to help this be achieved. Feel free to give me a call at your convenience 216-451-7755.

Best,
Annabel