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I stopped by Office Depot on my way somewhere last weekend, to trade another dead inkjet cartridge for a ream of recycled paper, and I wondered yet again, why would Office Depot offer a ream of paper for an empty inkjet printer cartridge?

Today I saw an AP article that opened with a provocative question:

Ever wonder why office-supply stores will offer a ream of paper or $3 for empty inkjet printer cartridges?

In fact, I have!

The article goes on to explain that OEM cartridge vendors as well as refillers purchase used inkjet cartridges, even broken ones. Some models fetch $7 apiece.

Office Depot’s EnviroCopy paper retails for $3.50-$5.00 per ream; the manufacturing cost is probably half that. So it seems the inkjet cartridge exchange program is a profit center. Which is great news; it’s a useful public service too. I hope Office Depot is making money at it, because then they’ll keep the program going, which if nothing else means I won’t have to buy printer paper for the rest of my life.

Speaking of which… When I put my new ream of paper with the four already in the closet, I realised that an inkjet cartridge probably doesn’t print 500 pages. Which means I’m going to earn another ream of paper before I finish printing this one. And probably part of a third as well.

That’s the story behind the headline. If you own an inkjet printer, you’re almost certainly earning more free paper than you can use.

However, that means inkjet cartridges are the aluminum cans of the ’00s. They’re worth picking out of someone else’s trash. Maybe not for you, but for someone. When I lived in San Francisco, we’d put our recycling on the curb on Sunday nights; at dawn every Monday morning, homeless people would march up the street, picking the aluminum cans out of the recycling bins. The cans had passed a value threshhold, when suddenly they were worth picking through refuse for, stacking into shopping carts, and wheeling halfway across town to the recycling center.

I don’t know what homeless people are going to do with case upon case of recycled printer paper, but you get the idea.

Update, 2007-02-06: Never mind; Office Depot’s inkjet cartridge recycling program has begun to suck.