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Los Angeles Aims To Ban Single-Use Printer Cartridges (tomshardware.com) 71

Posted by BeauHD from the enough-is-enough dept.
Los Angeles is moving to ban single-use printer cartridges that can't be refilled or taken back for recycling. Tom's Hardware reports: Printer cartridges are usually built with a combination of plastic, metal, and chemicals that makes them hard to easily dispose. They can be treated as hazardous waste by the city, but even then it would take them hundreds of years to actually disintegrate at a waste site. Since they're designed to be thrown away in the first place, the real solution is to target the root of the issue -- hence the ban.
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Los Angeles Aims To Ban Single-Use Printer Cartridges More

Los Angeles Aims To Ban Single-Use Printer Cartridges

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  • Are there any multi-use cartridges on offer? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Friday January 30, 2026 @07:08PM (#65960048)

    Serious question. Are there any multi-use cartridges on offer any more?

    All I've seen is "refilling services" that generally have to fuck around with printers' cartridge DRM to get them to work after refill.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      There are "eco tank" inkjets that can be refilled with liquid ink by a home user.

    • ..printers' cartridge DRM..

      Speaking of root causes needing a ban..with a burning pitchfork colonoscopy if necessary.

      Why stop at ink cartridges? I’d refill a laser toner drum at my local store-mart. Just pop it in the drum-o-matic vending machine. Make those drums out of gun polymer and they’ll outlast three printers.

      (Yeah. I’ve still got Paperless Society open on my IT Bingo card too. I’ll make a note with my NewOld mechanical keyboard while watching the Rolling Stones live stream straight to vinyl for Ge

      • Because the markets for inkjets and lasers are different. The kind of crowd that buys inkjets usually wants the cheapest possible printer and doesn't bother to look at how much the ink cartridges cost or how much they can print before they go empty. Instead, if you buy a laser, you are probably not the average clueless Joe and have probably done a minimum amount of research in your purchase. That said, "tank"-style printers do exist for people who want an inkjet (for example, if you don't want conductive to

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by ukoda ( 537183 )
          For A4 and A3 size printing laser printers are best way to go but if you want to print big, like large banners or whole walls, then the commercial grade tank style ink jet printers are used. They are really cool to watch in operation.

          As for toner or drums with DRM that you be your typical HP offering. Instead buy a Brother, they are targeted at people who understand how to do basic maths on consumables, and still manage to have reasonable up front purchase costs. The one I brought recently and even ap

    • https://www.amazon.com/s?k=eco... [amazon.com]

      I bought one of these recently, and I love it! No cartridges to replace, and the ink is about 95% cheaper per page, than HP cartridges.

      • Cheap, yes, but these Ecotank don't make as good photo prints compared to printers with more color cartridges. Source: I have both a Canon Pro 100 and an Ecotank 5800.

        The Canon are a huge PITA to reset and refill. But the results speak for themselves. It's not even close. Canon has replaceable print head, also.

        • Got an Epson EcoTank 8550 and photo prints on decent inkjet paper are really good. The A3 format is outstanding for pre-print proofing, if you happen to publish photos in books or magazines. With this printer I spend much more on paper than ink ;-)

          • I believe you that the ET-8550 is a great photo printer. But professional reviewers still rate the color accuracy as inferior to printers with more color cartridges.

            This one for example compares the 6 color ET-8550 against the 10 color Canon Pro 200. the only con listed for the ET-8550 is color accuracy.

            I couldn't find one that compares it against my 8-color Canon Pro 100.

            I don't publish in magazines, but I do print and frame my photos at home. One thing I do like about the ET-8550 specs is that it can prin

          • I believe you that the ET-8550 is a great photo printer. But professional reviewers still rate the color accuracy as inferior to printers with more color cartridges.

            This one for example compares the 6 color ET-8550 against the 10 color Canon Pro 200. the only con listed for the ET-8550 is color accuracy.

            I couldn't find one that compares it against my 8-color Canon Pro 100.

            I don't publish in magazines, but I do print and frame my photos at home.

            I bought the ET-5800 mainly due to pigment inks to make t-shirt

          • Seconded! I managed to print a 200cm long image (paper roll from AliExpress), so except for the great quality it can do things at sizes that are prohibitively expensive if you want to get it done by some official shop. And perhaps 8 or 10 colour printers can do slightly better colours, I bet that you can barely tell if it's not side by side and you will need very expensive paper to have it stay better over time too. BTW I use Epson Archival paper at A3+ simply because it's one of the most affordable and av

        • Sure, and if you need to print your own high quality photos, you might not want one of these printers. If *I* want a high quality photo print, I'll get ShutterFly or some other photo site to do it for me.

          • I'll do that, also, when I need photo prints that exceed the dimensions my printers can do.
            But for smaller sizes, up to 13x26in with the Canon, I love to print them myself. The cost per print is very low, especially with the hundreds of sheets of Canon photo paper I bought for very cheap in Craigslist. It is a fun hobby, also. The quality really is excellent. It is time consuming, though, mainly due to cartridge refills.

    • The idea is if more bans take place, manufacturers would have to make refilling easier. An interim period of difficulty in refilling is a small price to pay for forcing manufacturers to make more eco-friendly products.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Well there are the Ecotank ones, where instead of a cartridge the printer has tanks for each colour that the user can refill.

      Never owned one, I stick to laser. If I need to do a colour print I use the local printing place.

  • I sense a civil war brewing on the Left Coast! In the south, we have Los Angeles, trying to ban single-use printer cartridges. In the north, we have Hewlett Packard, headquartered in Palo Alto (halfway between San Jose and San Francisco), and the king of "Only Our Cartridges!" One of the largest metropolitan areas in the country versus one of the most established Silicon Valley originals. Who will win? (Spoiler alert: the party with more money...)

    Full disclosure: After having used HP printers for dec

    • I hope Los Angeles wins, and banning single use printer cartridges goes world wide and printer companies have to compete on quality of printer only so more cash cow on selling overpriced printer ink cartridges, besides a city the size of LA I bet there is a truckload of just printer ink cartrages get buried in the landfill every month

    • No need for war, unfortunately (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Excelcia ( 906188 ) <slashdot@excelcia.ca> on Friday January 30, 2026 @07:51PM (#65960140) Homepage Journal

      Agree on HP. Absolutely. I use a Brother (MFC-J6945DW) with refillable cartridges [aliexpress.com] and may never need to replace it as I can replace the waste ink box and pads in it too. I had the same realization you did about HP [productrevue.ca] a few years ago. It's worth the space to have a large format scanner, printer, and copier where is ink costs far less per page than the actual paper. It's a piezo print head too, so no thermal caking and needs a head cleaning maybe every six months. So there are good options now, and I encourage people to educate themselves and find them. ECO Tank (Epson) were an option, but for a long time they dumbed down any ECO Tank printer's drivers so it couldn't do borderless - they didn't want it competing with their photo offerings. This is less the case now, but you still have to be careful.

      Anyway, as far as this legislation goes, unfortunately it doesn't necessarily mean anything. For the reason that it's pre-watered down:

      Los Angeles is moving to ban single-use printer cartridges that can't be refilled or taken back for recycling

      (emphasis added)

      So all HP has to do is offer some sort of recycling program, which they already technically do in most cases and areas. Meaningless legislation that may even be at the instigation of the printer lobby to make it look like action.

  • but, hey, better late than never as they say.

  • If you give companies choice, they will do the bare minimum to make containers recyclable while fully knowing that most people wouldn't bother doing it. They should make refillable, durable cartridges, with a guaranteed refill count. Full stop.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      If you give companies choice, they will do the bare minimum to make containers recyclable while fully knowing that most people wouldn't bother doing it. They should make refillable, durable cartridges, with a guaranteed refill count. Full stop.

      You make it sound like making a recyclable thing is easy. It isn't - you can't make a product recyclable across every recycling system out there.

      First, not all plastics are equally recyclable and many systems only recycle certain plastics. So you are limited in the ch

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ukoda ( 537183 )
        The simple solution, already popular with commercial inkjet printers, is to not have cartridges at all, instead have ink reservoirs that feed the print head and can simply be topped up by pouring ink in the top.
  • A cartridge that is just a bottle of ink has no (legitimate) reason to include a circuit board. And yes early on I had the HP inkjet printer that included the print head in the cartridge, which while a colossal waste also meant the print head didn't need to be designed to last longer than the ink and an unsolvable clogged unit was just a new 'ink cartridge' away.

    Ah but but it helps to detect low ink - ahha! but no, those simple competing cannon ink cartridges around the same era were in fact just a bottl

    • The reason for the circuit board, is to make sure you have to buy more ink before it's actually really gone.

    • A cartridge that is just a bottle of ink has no (legitimate) reason to include a circuit board.

      Guess what? The manufacturers agree with you, they have introduced "tank"-style printers that you pour ink into them from a bottle. The bottles have no electronics at all on them. But guess what? Average Joe will keep buying printers using expensive cartridges with a tiny amount of ink in them and DRM circuitry on them because Average Joe doesn't think when buying stuff and doesn't plan ahead.

  • Re: (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kurkosdr ( 2378710 ) on Friday January 30, 2026 @07:41PM (#65960118)
    To any people who think this will force printer manufacturers like HP to open the DRM in their cartridges: No, it won't, they'll simply create an "approved" unlocking system where they'll charge so much for the unlocking service that the remanufactured cartridges made with the official unlocking process won't be any cheaper, kind of like what Apple does with the iPhone replacement parts that they have to make available to third parties as part of various "right to repair" legislations.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ukoda ( 537183 )
      Yea, HP would be big enough dicks to try that on. Smart people will by brands like Brother. I guess the follow on legislation would be forcing the disclosure of per page print cost, but I guess HP would find a way to game that system too.
  • This sounds like a good idea, but how much plastic does it really save from being pollution? The ink you buy to refill your printer will, you guessed it, come in plastic jugs. I agree with another poster that electronics should not be in the disposable cartridges.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ukoda ( 537183 )
      Yes, but that plastic refill container is a single material, that hopefully would be recyclable type. An ink cartridge is make up of several materials making the recycling of them rather difficult in any meaningful way.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kackle ( 910159 )
        Forgive my re-posting this: I agree! However for full disclosure, when the printer fails (and there are few printer repairmen in 2026), the printer will be discarded. The full jugs of ink may be discarded too if they're incompatible with the next printer purchased. Also, pouring ink into printer wells is messy, meaning clean-up, meaning clean-up materials will also be discarded upon every refill. I suspect a smaller decrease in pollution than desired and expected.

  • These lawsuits have been going on for up to 40 years with no such requirement, or to put it another. Don't hold your breath. I suspect that some politician needs some last minute sound bites for their upcoming election. The suit will be dropped later this year. LIKE EVERY ONE OF THEM.

  • Everything not compulsory is prohibited.

  • Greed by the manufacturers is the root of the problem. It's designed to make you buy more ink than you need because you are out of just one color.

    Can we just ban corporate greed instead? That would fix a lot of problems all at once. /s

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