When Ninestar commenced operations in China 21 years ago, it was in remanufacturing. It continues to remanufacture both toner and ink printer cartridges.
Many buyers think that manufacturers in China no longer remanufacture used OEM, virgin cartridges. This is brought about by the difficulty for many to source suitable cartridges for remanufacturing. It also comes at a time when the Chinese government has clamped down on e-waste being shipped from other countries.
In 2020, Ninestar G&G ramped up its existing cartridge recycling program to firstly be more visible about supporting a more sustainable circular economy.
Secondly, it wanted to provide a better solution for end-users who were not sure how to deal with the empty waste cartridges they were generating. It called this campaign “Going Green.”
Cores, cartridges and containers arrive at Ninestar's Zhuhai warehouse from across the globe ready to be sorted and remanufactured.
Eric Zhang—General Manager of Ninestar Image Tech Limited—explained that the production, sales and use of the remanufactured print consumables all belong to good environmentally friendly attitudes and behaviors. “G&G continues to emphasise every step from recycling through to remanufacturing,” said Zhang. “To this end, we have grown the number of remanufactured alternatives for customers to give them more “green choices.”
Every cartridge that is returned is carefully sorted and cleaned by skilled employees under rigorous standards.
Ninestar looked to the key markets of Western Europe and North America to source a good supply of used OEM cartridge cores. The printer OEMs still enjoy a market share of up to 70 percent in these regions, whereas in countries like China, India, and Russia the printer OEMs have less than half of the total market share in terms of printer supplies.
Every empty cartridge in good condition is reused and remanufactured. Broken, unrepairable or unusable cartridges are all sent to accredited
recycling program.
“In January 2021, we ran our most recent campaign where we encouraged consumers to return their used ink cartridges at their convenience via a postage-paid envelope enclosed in the packaging of G&G cartridges,” said Zhang.
A large logistics warehouse located in Zhuhai China, provides dedicated space for hundreds of thousands of empty toner cartridges
Most consumers do not know how to deal with empty cartridges. The easy option for them is to discard them like other rubbish that ends up in landfill. “You have to catch the end-user at the actual time they pull that empty, used cartridge out of their printer. You have to make it easy,” said Zhang. “The G&G recycling program provides an on-the-spot, free-and-easy method to dispose of the empty cartridge responsibly.”
Many consumers now use the postage-paid envelope provided by G&G at the time they replace the empty cartridge with a full G&G cartridge into their printer. It is important to note that the cartridge that is returned in the postage-paid envelope may be an empty OEM, G&G or other third-party cartridges.
Every cartridge that is returned is carefully sorted and cleaned by skilled employees under rigorous standards. Every empty cartridge in good condition is reused and remanufactured. Broken, unrepairable or unusable cartridges are all sent to an accredited recycling program.
A large logistics warehouse located in Zhuhai China, provides dedicated space for hundreds of thousands of empty toner cartridges ready for sorting, grading, and remanufacturing. A separate warehouse is used to store and sort empty ink cartridges ready for remanufacturing.
A large logistics warehouse located in Zhuhai China, provides dedicated space for hundreds of thousands of empty toner cartridges
Ninestar remanufactures hundreds of thousands of toner and ink cartridges as part of its Going Green strategy
The remanufacturing of all those cartridges is done at yet another Ninestar factory site.
Ninestar welcomes International Reman Day and joins others in China and around the world in celebrating the values generated from remanufacturing in a wide variety of industries.
About Ninestar & G&G
G&G is a premium global brand from Ninestar, delivering gold standard new-built and remanufactured printing solutions to more than 200 million. So far, G&G has provided reman ink cartridges and reman toner cartridges covering 90% of OEM brands to customers.