Refilled cartridges: An upcoming business?

The practice of selling the old non-usable items lying in house is an old practice. And the trend of it being a booming business for many is also not something very strange to be discovered. As the world has seen developments, so has this trend. There are number of 'manufacturers' who invite empty cartridges from consumers and offer them at an enticing price in return.

The reasons laid for that could be many--environmental friendly as these are non-biodegradable products, easy fund raising source for voluntary organizations, cost cutting for corporate entities, cost for machines which are no longer in use and ready cash payment 'facility'.

Talking about India, it is very easy to trace the advertisements in all the local and national dailies. For abroad, one can see thousands of companies into this booming 'business' with a simple search on any of the popular search engines.

The companies pose, as 'liquidation source' for purchasing the customers' waste and empty laser, copier and printer cartridges. The said advertisements have clearly stated price list for each and every make and offer exciting schemes on 'bundled' packs--as in the ones that contain cartridges of more than one make.

One thing that was observed in many of these advertisements was that most of them had very categorically mentioned that "We do not buy back Epson cartridges" or "We do not have manufacturing capability for refilling Epson cartridges". Mostly the demand is high for Xerox, Canon, Sharp, HP, Toshiba, Minolta and Lexmark print and laser cartridges and toners.

As the DQW New Bureau spoke to one such 'invitee', NL Mundra of Welcome Enterprises in Delhi who had his name in one such 'invitation', he denied of any knowledge about what happens to this collected trash ultimately.

Explained Mundra, "I have absolutely no idea what the main 'people' do with it, but my job only requires me to source the material from here and send it to them. I purchase the material from here and sell it to different locations as per their requirement. What I though believe is that this material is exported to countries like Indonesia and Italy and the main export happens from
Jaipur."

If there are too many unexplained answers, it surely leads a human mind to conclusions within arm's reach. So what finally happens to these cartridges? Is this the point where the mess of counterfeit starts?

Taking an opinion on the same from a leading media supplier in the capital, AK Pandey, Director, Miraj Infotech, explained, "I cannot say if this is it or not. But what I know is that people who do it surely are aware of all the pros & cons of their deeds (misdeeds). Thanks to our legal set up, even if a person were arrested for doing this, he would be out of the prison the very next day. So in absence of stringent actions, it is only the easy ways of doing such mischief's that govern."