Programs

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Reuse programs enable customers to buy pre-owned HP products, which include lease, trade-in or buy-back returns; demonstration equipment; and canceled orders. Products are refurbished or remanufactured as needed, reboxed and then resold, often with an HP warranty. We offer remarketed products for most HP product lines including printers, PCs and monitors. We have even remarketed entire data centers.

In all cases, we follow strict processes to protect user data and confidentiality. Our worldwide asset recovery services help commercial customers retire older or obsolete IT equipment in a way that helps safeguard their proprietary information and complies with applicable environmental laws.

Some products returned to us under buy-back, trade-in and leasing arrangements are not suitable for reuse. These enter our recycling programs, along with equipment returned in consumer take-back programs.

In Europe, HP worked with Braun, Electrolux and Sony to set up the European Recycling Platform (ERP) in 2002, in response to the European Union’s WEEE Directive. The ERP sets standards and conditions for recycling contractors and conducts audits to ensure that high standards are applied. Experience with ERP confirms that competition among contractors decreases costs. Lower costs are important to increasing recycling volumes as well as offering savings to HP.

In 2007, ERP treated about 24,500 tonnes of equipment on behalf of HP. Overall, ERP treated a total of nearly 150,000 tonnes of equipment from more than 750 producers in nine major countries of the EU.

In 2007, we took steps to address the growing problem of product disposal in two fast-growing regions. In Africa, we joined a collaboration that is working to identify sustainable recycling processes for electronics in developing countries. In China, in addition to an existing consumer print cartridge take-back program, we introduced HP service centers in 31 major cities where consumers and small- and medium-size businesses can drop off HP-branded hardware for recycling.

These service centers accept, free of charge, any HP printer, scanner, fax machine, notebook or desktop computer, monitor, handheld device, camera, and associated external components such as cables, mice and keyboards. We consolidate and sort the products for recycling in China, and we plan to extend the program to include more cities and more drop-offs within the current cities. See details of the hardware recycling program.

	Print cartridges

HP does not offer reused print cartridges because they do not meet our quality and reliability standards. Instead, we provide free recycling for HP print cartridges in 47 countries or territories. We offer commercial customers a bulk return option and provide consumers with return envelopes, labels or instructions.

We design HP print cartridges to meet the needs of our recycling system and incorporate recycled material. Since we take back only our own cartridges, we can be certain about the material content, making it easier to process exhausted cartridges and reuse the material to manufacture new ones.

We have engineered HP print cartridges that use recycled plastic to meet our rigorous standards for quality and reliability. Since 2005, we have incorporated post-consumer recycled plastic as raw material in more than 200 million newly molded original HP inkjet print cartridges. HP also uses post-consumer recycled plastic recovered through our return and recycling program in the manufacture of original HP LaserJet print cartridges. This recycled plastic can represent as much as 25 percent, by weight, of the newly molded LaserJet cartridge housing.¹

We used 5 million pounds (2,300 tonnes) of recycled plastic in original HP inkjet cartridges in 2007. Cartridges returned through our recycling programs contributed half of that total. (See Materials for more information.)

The following table describes the range of our reuse and recycling programs.

¹ Percent of recycled plastic varies by model and over time, based on availability of recycled plastic that meets HP’s product quality and cost requirements.
² Refers to whether option is at cost to the customer and whether the customer receives credit.

See a list of recycling options by country.