1. Huge Rate of Waste of Ink Cartridges/ Selenium Drums
According to statistics, in the year 2000, China sold 2 million 400 thousand ink-jet or /laser printers in total, as well as 36 million ink cartridges /selenium drums with a total value of over 10 billion Chinese Yuan, an increase of 38% since 1999.

Current estimates put the numbers of inkjet printers in China at 9 million. Since 2002 ink jet printers have rapidly begun to appear into many more offices and family homes since they have the advantage of being small, light weight, efficient and cheap.

They are the most popular computer peripherals, and the number of customers for inkjet printers is still increasing at a rate of about 30% annually.

2. Expensive Imported Ink Cartridges/selenium Drum Prices
Printers are cheap but printer accessories are expensive, so there are still price barriers. In the printer market, the major brand make up more than 90% of all the ink cartridge/selenium drums, mainly these four main brands: EPSON, CANON, HP, LEXMARK

They all have same price barriers as above, each cartridge costing hundreds, if not many hundreds of Yuan. In fact, each selenium drum can cost hundreds or even thousand of Chinese Yuan.

Moreover you won't get much "bang for the buck" as these inks are so expensive. The cost of 2, 3 or 4 imported brand name printer accessories is often equivalent to the cost of buying a whole new printer.

3. Green Printing is imperative!
Due to long term advertising for these well known brands imported from abroad, people get used to the brand and trust its reliability, seldom try changing. Therefore, the rate of usage of domestically recycled compatibles and accessories is less than 1%.

This is an absolute waste!

Ink Cartridges and Selenium Drums are used once and thrown away, which not only pollute the environment but is also a waste of resources. Therefore, environmental protection and resource recycling are our main themes.

Worldwide, the recycling of old ink cartridges and selenium drums is becoming more widely recognized, throughout Europe and USA. Consumables recycling companies are making great efforts to realize the goals of 'Green Printing'.

In 1994 the USA had already started to put laser printer black-powder cartridge recycling in their Environmental Protection Law.
(See the EPA.gov website for more information on that ). Consumers began to realise that recycling could actually save them money.

By the efforts of more and more people, the state of New York recently passed a new law which says that purchasing must follow recycling, remanufacturing and optimization regulations. Around the same time, the USA government decided to check the implementation of the regulations periodically to get rid of any initial negative attitudes or reluctance to that may have lingered in putting the new procedures into place.

In October 1998 US President Clinton signed an act into law, stating that people are not allowed to use imported ink cartridges unless they have a recycled cartridge body and recycled selenium drum, so that the reuse of recycled accessories increased by more than 30%.

The problem of protecting the environment has gained a high level of recognition from the relevant environmental departments in China so, correspondingly, Chinese law and environmental policy will emerge to regulate these important issues. Since environmental protection is now well understood and accepted by the general public, this trend will continue to be a strong basis for the development of the printer accessories recycling market.

4. Potentially huge recycling market An Ink cartridge is an ink container, and a selenium drum is a container for carbon powder, so properly and scientifically filling an ink cartridge should not affect the quality of printing nor cause damage to printers.

Since importing the advanced technology, the recycled cartridges have reached the same level of technology as the foreign products. The price for refilling cartridges is only a quarter of that for the imported one. Therefore recycling of consumables has become the first choice for everyone. In any event, the environmental protection policies, the consumers logical choice and the price advantage of these products all have spurred the growth of a big market.