HP’s growing collaboration with the Lavergne Group is the culmination of a twelve-year relationship focused on developing “closed loop” plastic resin solutions that meet the high quality standards required for Original HP ink cartridges. The Lavergne Group’s expansion in Vietnam provides additional capacity for HP to continue year-on-year increases in the volume of “closed loop” recycled plastic used in manufacturing Original HP ink cartridges.

The Lavergne Group’s new plant in Vietnam will facilitate regional qualification efforts, enabling future growth in the volume of Original HP Ink cartridges that can be manufactured using the “closed loop” recycling process.

The facility will also be closer to the manufacturing sites for HP Original Ink cartridges in Asia Pacific and local sources of recycled materials, which will provide an estimated six per cent reduction in the plastic carbon footprint when the facility is fully operational.

“We are excited to grow our collaboration with Lavergne in ‘closed loop’ ink cartridge recycling, which will help our customers who are using Original HP Ink reduce their impact on the environment,” said Annukka Dickens, Head of Environmental Management, Asia Pacific and Japan, HP. “This year, HP has achieved a truly significant milestone, with 1 billion Original HP Ink cartridges manufactured using the ‘closed loop’ recycling process.”

“We are proud to continue to work closely with HP, who demonstrates a strong commitment to the environment through continued recycling innovation that enables users of Original HP Ink to reduce their environmental impact,” said Mr Jean-Luc Lavergne, President, Lavergne Group.

Ink Cartridge Recycling Innovation Breakthroughs

• HP has achieved several innovation breakthroughs in ink cartridge recycling:
• HP introduced the industry’s first “closed loop” ink cartridge recycling process, combining plastic from post-consumer recycled Original HP Ink cartridges and other sources, such as recycled water and soda bottles, in the manufacturing of new Original HP Ink cartridges. More than 1 billion Original HP ink cartridges were manufactured with “closed loop” RPET plastic, since the program’s first cartridge was manufactured in the year 2005.
• In 2009, HP expanded the “closed loop” plastic solution to polypropylene plastics, leveraging the knowledge gained from the RPET program.  Since the process’s inception, 20 million cartridges have been manufactured using plastic from the “closed loop” polypropylene process.
• For HP ink cartridges that use recycled materials, up to 70% of the cartridge is made from recycled material.
• In 2010, HP and Lavergne co-developed an industry-first ink cartridge disassembly machine, which can separate the plastic, foam, ink and metal components of returned cartridges more effectively and recover a higher percentage of re-usable content. Based on the success of the development effort, this breakthrough equipment is currently being installed in multiple HP recycling facilities, enabling dramatic improvements in material recovery and simplifying recycling supply chain and processes.

HP’s continuous improvement in “closed loop” processes and recycling innovations over the past six years (2005-2010) to enhance ink cartridge collection, improve the ink cartridge disassembly process and to grow the volume of recycled plastic for ink cartridge manufacturing have led to further reductions in environmental impact. In 2010, the recycled plastic in Original HP Ink cartridges has up to a 33% smaller carbon footprint than the virgin plastic in Original HP Ink cartridges, even when accounting for the impact associated with collecting, transporting and processing used cartridges and plastic bottles.4 Additionally, the recycled plastic used in Original HP Ink cartridges requires 62% less fossil fuel to manufacture, transport and recycle, when compared with virgin plastic.

HP and Lavergne are currently engaged in ongoing development of recycled plastics involving multiple plastics types for use in a number of HP printing products.

Reducing Environmental Impact without Compromising Quality

Original HP Ink cartridges have been engineered to use up to 70% recycled material and still meet HP’s demanding standards for quality and reliability.3 This is in line with HP’s Design for Environment program, which ensures that environmental design goals are integrated into every product design, measuring Original HP cartridges’ performance in such areas as material efficiency, ease of recycling, packaging efficiency and reducing environmental impact.

Customers can also reduce environmental impact by reducing waste of paper, ink and energy from failed jobs or printer damage when using aftermarket alternatives such as refills:

• Customers can get twice as many prints with Original HP Ink than refilled cartridges.
• Original HP Ink cartridges tested also were found to have worked all the time, in contrast to 42% of refilled cartridges tested that were dead-on-arrival or failed prematurely.

Recycling Original HP print cartridges is made easy with the HP Planet Partners program, available in more than 50 countries and territories worldwide.7 Recycling efforts by customers and HP have kept 1.3 billion plastic bottles and more than 210 million HP ink cartridges out of landfills. In 2010, HP used 6,000 tonnes (13.6 million pounds) of recycled plastic from plastic bottles and Original HP ink cartridges recovered through the HP Planet Partners program to manufacture new Original HP ink cartridges. This is equivalent to keeping 340 tractor-trailer loads of plastic from going into landfills.

The extra capacity for recycling may fuel an increase in the OEM’s cartridge collection operations, which in turn could place further strain on the supply of empty cartridges for the aftermarket.

The cartridges are shredded to their component parts, and the plastic is treated and reused in new HP products.

The process, known as “upcycling”, is said by HP to be more environmental than most other kinds of recycling, as most of the material is returned to the same level of use, rather than “downcycled” into an inferior plastic for use in areas like construction material.

Critics however often point out that the process still uses much more energy than remanufacturing, and HP recently announced that it had manufactured 1 billion cartridges using this method.

The two companies have worked together to recycle cartridges in this manner for 12 years, with Lavergne recycling cartridges collected in HP’s Planet Partners scheme.

Annukka Dickens, Head of Environmental Management, Asia Pacific and Japan, HP, commented: “We are excited to grow our collaboration with Lavergne in ‘closed loop’ ink cartridge recycling, which will help our customers who are using Original HP Ink reduce their impact on the environment.

“This year, HP has achieved a truly significant milestone, with 1 billion Original HP Ink cartridges manufactured using the ‘closed loop’ recycling process.”

Mr Jean-Luc Lavergne, President, Lavergne Group, added:  “We are proud to continue to work closely with HP, who demonstrates a strong commitment to the environment through continued recycling innovation that enables users of Original HP Ink to reduce their environmental impact.”

The facility will be closer to the manufacturing sites for HP Original Ink cartridges in Asia Pacific and local sources of recycled materials, which will provide about 6% reduction in the plastic carbon footprint when the facility is fully operational. The Vietnam facility will provide additional capacity for HP to increase the volume of closed loop recycled plastic used in manufacturing ink cartridges.

Annukka Dickens, head of environmental management, Asia Pacific and Japan, HP, says, “This year, HP has achieved a truly significant milestone, with 1 billion Original HP Ink cartridges manufactured using the closed loop recycling process. We are excited to grow our collaboration with Lavergne in closed loop ink cartridge recycling, which will help our customers who are using Original HP Ink reduce their impact on the environment.”

HP says that the Lavergne Group’s new plant in Vietnam will facilitate regional qualification efforts, enabling future growth in the volume of Original HP Ink cartridges that it can manufacture using the closed loop recycling process. The facility sits closer to the manufacturing sites for HP Original Ink cartridges in Asia Pacific and local sources of recycled materials, which HP says will provide an estimated six per cent reduction in the plastic carbon footprint when the facility is fully operational.^”

The company adds that the growing collaboration with the Lavergne Group marks the culmination of a twelve-year relationship focused on developing closed loop plastic resin solutions that meet the quality standards required for Original HP ink cartridges. The Lavergne Group’s expansion in Vietnam provides additional capacity for HP to continue year-on-year increases in the volume of closed loop recycled plastic used in manufacturing Original HP ink cartridges.

Jean-Luc Lavergne, president, Lavergne Group, says, “We are proud to continue to work closely with HP, who demonstrates a strong commitment to the environment through continued recycling innovation that enables users of Original HP Ink to reduce their environmental impact.”

HP says it introduced the industry’s first closed loop ink cartridge recycling process, combining plastic from post-consumer recycled Original HP Ink cartridges and other sources, such as recycled water and soda bottles, in the manufacturing of new Original HP Ink cartridges. It manufactured more than one billion Original HP ink cartridges from closed loop RPET plastic, since the programme’s first cartridge appeared in 2005.

This joint effort sees the opening of a new plastic compounding facility in Vietnam following the manufacturing of one billion ink cartridges from recycled plastic.

The new plant in Vietnam will also facilitate regional qualification efforts, enabling future growth in the volume of Original HP Ink cartridges that can be manufactured using the ‘closed loop’ recycling process.

Also, due to the fact that the Lavergne facility is closer to the manufacturing sites for HP Original Ink cartridges in Asia Pacific and local sources of recycled materials, HP estimates a six percent reduction in the plastic carbon footprint as well when the site is fully operational.

Currently, these HP print cartridges are available in more than 50 countries and have kept 1.3 billion plastic bottles and more than 210 million HP ink cartridges out of landfills.

For more information, please visit www.hp.com.

Mass production might have made our lives easier, but the explosion of products bought, sold and disposed of has had an adverse impact on the environment. As Annukka Dickens, HP’s head of environmental management, Asia Pacific and Japan, says, “HP now manufactures 3.5 products every second. But we realize bigger does not always mean better.”

This has spurred HP to search for ecologically viable solutions in ink cartridge production . One result of that is what it calls ‘closed-loop’ ink cartridge recycling thus reducing environmental damage.

It has been collaborating with the Lavergne Group, which takes undervalued scrap, returned expired goods, or damaged products into its manufacturing process and produces a resin robust enough to be moulded back into the original end product, or upcycled into a value added product. Last month it extended the tie-up to Lavergne’s new facility in the picturesque Vietnamese coastal town of Da Nang.

Recycling process

The significant stage in the recycling process is the separation of plastics, and recovering recyclable plastic. Of the two main types of plastics, thermoset cannot be recycled, while thermoplastic – which consists of high density polyethylene, polypropylene, polyethylene terephthalate (commonly called PET), etc – can be.

Since PET can be recycled, it’s separated, recovered and shredded. It is mixed with additives (to ensure good quality) to create ‘recycled PET’ (RPET), which is used in cartridges. The process is called ‘closed-loop’ because use of recycled plastic in original inkjet cartridges closes the loop.

Most mineral water bottles are made of PET, but only 20% of the 500 billion PET bottles produced annually is recycled. HP uses 18 million kg of bottle flake in the RPET process, thus keeping the equivalent of 1.3 billion bottles out of landfills.

Extension of technology

The first cartridge using RPET process rolled out in 2005 and since then, till July 2011, HP has produced more than 1 billion cartridges using this technology. In 2009, HP extended the recycling process to plastics containing polypropylene, and since then 20 million cartridges have been made using polypropylene.

Last year, HP and Lavergne collaborated to develop a machine that more effectively separates plastic, foam, ink and metal components from the returned cartridges, and recovers a higher percentage of re-usable materials.

Looking ahead

The new Vietnam facility will help reduce carbon footprint by being closer to HP’s manufacturing sites and local sources of recycled material. Dean Miller, manager for supplies recycling solutions in HP, says the new facility will reduce the business’s carbon footprint by 22%, fossil fuel consumption by 50% and water consumption by 67%.

HP is aiming to improve its recycling process. Now only the plastic component of the ink cartridge is recycled, but the hope is that further research would yield possibilities of recycling the foam and other parts of the product.

Eco cartridge facts

70% of HP ink cartridge is made from recycled material Recycled plastic in cartridges need 62% less fossil fuel to manufacture, transport and recycle, compared to virgin plastic. Recycling has kept 1.3 billion plastic bottles and 210 million HP ink cartridges out of landfills.