The residues especially the eWaste around the world are polluting the earth. They are burned or illegally dumped in the nature. Earlier due to lack of environmental regulations, most of the wasted stuff is not recycled properly and end up polluting the earth. Today, environmental organizations and governments adopt solutions to reduce, reuse or recycling waste in order to preserve the environment. Recycling saves environment and also help economy.
There are environmental benefits to refilling the cartridges. The environmental impact of the ink/toner itself is the same whether it is delivered in cartridges or by itself, but a single cartridge is reused several times, eliminating much of the impact of manufacture and distribution.
Toner cartridges are made from plastic and small amounts of other materials. The plastic in each cartridges takes approximately 3.3 liters of oil to produce. 4 liters of petroleum are also burned to manufacture one toner cartridge, releasing the equivalent of .01 metric tons of Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere. Thus refilling rather than replacing a cartridge saves approximately 7.3 liters of petroleum and releases 0.1 metric tons less CO2. Refilling also avoids discarding a spent cartridge into landfill, where it would take hundreds or thousands of years to decompose.