Ink Cartridge Re-Use: Light and Heat

Readers know that I was indelibly marked by my experience in Zuhai, Nanhai, and Foshan China a decade ago.  When I came across a neighborhood, several city blocks, where all the printer refurbishers had been shut down, and saw the supressed emotions of the Chinese city official, I went a google-ing to find what had happened.  I found an AGMA press release about a partnership agreement between HP and the Chinese EPA, as well as a long (and misleading) article in China Daily about "poison" ink cartridges.  The AGMA press release disappeared, Orwell-style, when I asked about it.

As if the new inks are healthy, and the fake inks are poison...  The link between counterfeit ink and poison?  E-storks with photos of children, and white juju words like toxin and cancer and e-waste.


What has been poisoned is the well of public opinion on reuse.

The fulcrum between legitimate re-manufacturing of consumables (inks, ribbons, toner cartridges) and counterfeit (back in a fake OEM box) remains the most kinetic place in the debate.   I just discovered a blog by David Connett, editor of The Recycler, a trade magazine for used cartridge remanufacturing.

350 Companies were expected at the 9th ReChina Asia Expo last week in Shanghai.  If it's the 9th show, it means it's been organized since about the same time I became aware of the war on reuse.

The profits on consumables like printer ink are astronomical.  The patent wars and push on patent exhaustion doctrine could have long term and wide ranging effects.