Five Office Supplies You Should Recycle
In the print industry, businesses like Benchmark go through an extensive amount of office supplies each year. Supplies like paper, binders, envelopes, writing utensils, printer supplies, sticky notes, paper clips and more. Because of this, we feel its is important for your business to become more environmentally friendly.
Here are 5 ways you can recycle the unusually recyclable products in your office.
1. Writing Utensils It’s strange to think old pens, markers, highlighters and the like could be recycled, but it is possible! However, they are made of a variety of materials, so they can’t be recycled in the ways that your office usually operates. Companies such as Terracycle have what are called zero waste boxes you can use to recycle any non-electric items that come through your office.
2. Paper Clips and Staples Staples will not affect your recycled paper, as they are small enough to go through the recycling process. Paperclips are easy to reuse and many of your local schools and scrap metal facilities may accept certain quantities of them.
3. Toner Cartridges Used ink and toner cartridges are not items that you would usually consider recycling. However, Xerox can provide your office with eco boxes to safely send your used toner cartridges for reuse and recycling. You probably have a local office supply store that will take your used cartridges for recycling as well. All you have to do is ask!
4. Shredded Paper Shredded paper cannot be recycled in your usual recycling bins, because it can’t be recycled to make new paper, and most of your recycling vendors won’t accept it either. So instead of recycling those trash bags full of shredded paper, repurpose them! Here is a list of things to do with your shredded paper.
5. Binders Plastic 3-ring binders harbor a multitude of different materials, so they can’t be recycled in the traditional ways. If you care and take the time, you can separate the materials in the binders, which make all of the components easy to recycle. Or if you don’t have the time to do this yourself, you can take your old binders to a participating office supply location where they are collected for recycling. There are also many ways to reuse your old binders. Learn more here.
We only have one planet to live on and we at Benchmark want to preserve it as much as we can. So the next time you go out shopping for office supplies look for the recycled options, and before you go to toss out those used up supplies consider giving them new homes!
