Southern Oregon University
IN-2: Innovation 2

The Ecology Center of the Siskiyous (ECOS) has been recycling empty print cartridges from campus departments for years. There is a drop-box next to the ECOS office where members of the campus community can bring empty ink and toner cartridges. In the past, the cartridges have either been shipped to out-of-town recycling companies, or driven 20 miles to a Staples in Medford. This year, the new ECOS staff became frustrated with the waste involved in transporting empty cartridges. The group has connected with Rapid Refill, a locally-owned franchise that takes old cartridges and refills them. We are now piloting a program where Rapid Refill comes to SOU and picks up all of our print cartridges, then refills them and sells them back to us at a discounted price. This represents a huge waste reduction for our campus, and we will close the loop on print cartridges. ECOS no longer ships or transports cartridges and the refurbished, refilled cartridges also represent a large cost savings for the university. We believe this program to be innovative in that it integrates a triple bottom line approach to a notoriously wasteful aspect of the campus community, printing.