U.S. Remanufacturing and Landfills Hit Hard by Imported Ink Cartridge Knockoffs

Planet Green remanufactures OEM’s used printer cartridges, disassembling, cleaning, refilling, and engineering them to be “as new”-but for about half the price. Business is good, with about a quarter million spent cartridges coming in a month, says Sean Levi, Planet Green CEO and founder. But his operation is among a dying breed in a U.S. industry once worth $7 billion.

Printer cartridge remanufacturing, which took off with a bang in the U.S., hangs by a thread today, falling demise to Chinese knockoffs—clone OEM cartridges that have flooded the market for a decade or so.

Remanufacturers that started from the ground up, eventually generating hundreds of millions a year bringing spent cartridges back to life, found it hard to impossible to compete with these cheap generic compatibles. Little by little, most of them shuttered, recalls Levi, as he sits at his facility in Chatsworth, California, once considered the cartridge remanufacturing capital of the country.

Back in the day, used OEM cartridges were a hot commodity, helping to fill a supply gap as computers, printers, and the cartridges that drive them flew off shelves. As demand outpaced supply, consumers were looking for alternative products, especially cheaper ones.

“We had brokers that just collected empty cartridges and sold them to remanufacturers like us. They commanded [retail] prices as high as $35 per unit,” Levi says.

Electronic recyclers reaped payback too; they were the industry’s biggest source of collections and a major revenue driver.

But today Levi gets calls from electronic waste companies sitting on thousands of cartridges. And he rejects a good share of them as they are non-recyclable clones.

“So, it’s become a big issue for the electronics recycling industry. They don’t know how to manage these cartridges,” he says.

Besides the blow to domestic businesses across the supply chain, the boom in imports is having environmental ramifications. Nearly as fast as these knockoffs flood the market, they get spent and ultimately pile up on landfills. About half of what Green Planet collects and sorts through turns out to be what he calls imported counterfeits and become part of that fast-accruing cartridge graveyard.

They are not designed in a way that they can be remanufactured. So, the few companies still doing this work are left to foot the bill to handle, warehouse, and dispose of them.

In time they break down into harmful microplastics, and they leave plenty more behind than say your empty, relatively clean plastic water bottle. Used cartridges have toner dust and ink residue that could potentially leach into the ground and water.

Impacts of these spent cartridges extend beyond California and the U.S.

“Remanufacturers and recyclers were once reducing this waste significantly, but the trend has reversed to where it’s really a global waste issue,” Levi says.

They sell like hotcakes online, and most of them are clones, though consumers would likely never know, much less would they know of consequences once their purchases reach the end of life. Sellers have falsely labeled them as recyclable or recycled, and sometimes deceptively claim they are remanufactured, say some folks calling for regulations to stop these imports.

While consumers may be fooled, the trained eye can spot a counterfeit fast. They are a different grade of plastic; plus, the product bears no brand name or logo.

The quandary is bigger and more complex than meets the eye, says Heidi Sanborn, executive director of the National Stewardship Action Council.

“This problem touches on several international and national issues:  the undermining of U.S. companies because illegal products are not being stopped at the border. 

“There are issues around the increase in single-use plastics.  And it’s about truth in labeling.  People are buying these cartridges thinking that they are well-made because they are getting false information,” she says

Remanufacturers in California brought these issues to the attention of a California state-appointed recycling commission that Sanborn chaired at the time.  That commission is working on a strategy with policy and education components hoping to stop the importation of overseas counterfeits.

Their early conversations center around ensuring there are penalties for false label claims and educating procurement professionals about buying authentic, quality, refillable OEM cartridges.

Los Angeles is taking a lead on the policy front. In August 2024, City Councilmember John Lee introduced a motion to prohibit the distribution and sale of aftermarket single-use clone-compatible printer cartridges in the City of Los Angeles.

This new initiative is expected to reduce the number of cartridges ending up in landfills, encourage recycling and reuse, decrease public exposure to hazardous materials, and potentially move other governments to adopt a similar ban, Lee says.
“For more than a decade, Los Angeles has led by example with ordinances designed to curb single-use plastics. Banning these cartridges is another step toward improving our sustainability efforts and better protecting our environment,” he says.

Levi is routing for that ban, and for it to reach beyond California.

“That’s the only solution to stop what has become a nationwide waste problem caused by these generic cartridges. We can’t just keep accepting other nations’ trash and having to deal with it.”