Canon Environmental Technologies, a company located in Gloucester County, Virginia, which works under the scrutiny of Canon Virginia Inc., is now changing the landscape by recycling the junked cartridges of the printer. People usually abandon these cartridges due to the fact that they do not contain enough toner to be utilized for printing. Hence, Canon Environmental Technologies is now taking the lead by recycling the material into an asphalt colorant and a binding agent. Well, it has to be noted that Canon is not the first one to come up with this technique. A company known as TonerPave, located in Melbourne, Australia, performed a successful experiment with this technique too back in 2013.
However, Canon is now aspiring to put up with the recycling trend and achieve maximum efficiency through the project. This Canon Recycled Toner Pellet Project seems to be a promising step towards the generation of asphalt for roads. Before starting the recycling process, the company makes sure that the toner is made up of finely ground plastic, carbon powder, and silica. Hence, when this is assured, the company first classifies the cartridges received according to the type of their material. With the help of machines, the cartridges will then be automatically dismantled and the plastic melted and transmitted into pallets.
This converted material would then be utilized again to construct new cartridges. On the other hand, the disregarded toner, which was separated previously, was then put into different pallets known as “Recycled Tonner Pallets (RTPs)” for further use. As of now, these recycled tonner pallets are being used by a construction company located in Virginia. They are efficiently using it in the construction of roads in which this recycled toner acts both as a coloring and a binding agent.
Along with this, the Virginia Department of Transportation has also legally authorized the use of this recycled toner in the construction of roads after passing it through various testing methods. The toner was successfully marked up to the quality standards and now this construction company buys 100% of the recycled pallets containing toner from Canon Virginia Inc. for its projects.