What to do with old ink cartridges.
 

I have accumulated a bunch of empty cartridges, mostly Canon BCI24 and Lexmark. It is cheaper and more convenient for me to buy new generic cartridges than refill these, so I was wondering if I could turn them in to some place like Office Depot for a few bucks.

Most likely they won't give you anything for them. But sometimes there are certain prizes if you return a certain number. It's best to bring them to Business deopt or w/e to recycle them.

Once they're old & dried they can be more difficult to make useful again. Not impossible, but it can be messy. Look for a refilling company in your area. They should have the painful parts of the process down to a science and can make use of the older cartridges. Won't be as cheap as doing it yourself but it'll be better than new. Some will just take the old as credit toward "new" refilled.

I haven't seen an office supply store pay money for cartridges. It's really just a way to protect their back-end from used cartridges getting to the refill companies. Huge margins on cartridges.

If you can, try a cheap laser. The economics are far better. They can be had for ~$100 initial cost, then when the starter cartridge runs dry (maybe 1K pages) add ~$8 for refill toner good for 6K pages.

I have a Canon i350, and generic ink for it is dirt-cheap. The cartridges are somewhat small, but I bought 8 blacks and 4 colors for $20 on eBay, including shipping. It suits my needs just fine.

That is a good price for ink! Laser will still be cheaper per page but the intial price can hurt. I've been stuck on them because of speed and appearance, and image durability. I still use my cheapo ink for color things but b&w goes to the laser.

At the local library, they have envelopes with pre-paid postage to mail in your old ink carts for recycling. You should look into that, or you can ask around local computer stores.

i throw them away. they cease to be useful to me.

yep - i throw them out also.

what in them is recyclable? the plastic? why would you mail them out when you could just throw them in your local plastic recycling bin? seems like a waste of time to me.