Cool, now ban the countdown chips that brick ink and printers that are still perfectly serviceable.
this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2026
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Hey this was actually some good news in regards to US laws for once.
Here in the state of California, we still have the qualified in regulatory positions. Hell, I think we already reintegrated with the WHO.
I'm glad to read that, keep that up! 🤗
Just FYI to people that you can get remanufactured ink cartridges for a fraction of the price (around half) of OEM. They are sometimes modified to contain more ink in the same body. The company I purchased from included a prepaid bag to send used cartridges back for reuse.
Also while I'm in PSA mode "REDUCE, REUSE, and then recycle". Sometimes we skip over the first two steps since reducing is not marketable and reusing rarely is (although reusing printer cartridges appears to be a sustainable business).
Or even better, get printers that work with ink tanks rather than ink cartridges :)
It's all fun and games until your printer holds you hostage with their DRM nonsense
You’re not wrong. Just have to be selective which brand printer you buy - and I say that with the awareness that a company can enshittify an online printer capable of monitoring cartridge use/ID at their whim. BS Proprietary cartridges that know when they’ve been used up and tattle someone’s refilled them and refuse to work (looking at you, HP).
Repeat after me: plastic does not recycle. It inevitably degrades in the process.
Regarding printers... ink tanks is the only sensible answer.
Laser is the answer. Inkjet dries and clogs the jets if not used often like back when it was invented. Hardly anyone prints like that anymore.
Only problem with laser is the desk size for color laser. If you don’t print very often, and you want color, a laser can take up space.
If you don't print very often and you want color, inkjet is terrible because of the short lifespan of the cartridges. Your library will probably have a printing service available for cheap or free. I think mine does color too. I get $35 of print credit every month just for living in the county. Otherwise there's always commercial print shops like FedEx.
Totally agree. I’ve been keeping ink tanks in ziplock bags so they don’t dry out.
I think I might cut over to a B&W inkjet. There are tiny versions of those now, and I can print color elsewhere.
Community ink tanks, with pipelines to transmit the ink from where it is mined to substations, and on and on.
The children yearn for the ink mines?
Can't print your homework? Back to the mine with you!
Water pipelines to the home. Gas pipelines to the home. Ink pipelines to the home. It just makes sense.
I want a clam chowder pipe straight into the kitchen.
We also need some sort of way to prevent heads from drying out so quickly.
Printer companies know heads dry out, and they ship tanks with caps / tape for prevent dry out on retail store shelves. But once the tanks are installed, printers just leave the heads exposed to the air. Like a pen without a cap, the tanks dry out.
I print like 5 times a year. So 90% of the time, when I’m replacing a tank, it’s because the damn head dried out.
Laser printers don’t have this problem. Their medium is already a dry powder!
Laser toner is literally micro plastic powder that gets rolled onto paper then baked, mmm
What? Didn't know this
Yep, laser toner is literally plastic dust that gets rolled on then baked. That's why it doesn't smudge or rub off when wet - it's plastic.
That's why there's so many large warnings to properly recycle toner cartridges.
Tbf as long as the toner doesn't spill anywhere, the risk is lower than other background sources like tyre dust. Still gives me the hereby jeebies though.
How printer dust is polluting the air? – TCTEC® Innovation - https://tctecinnovation.com/blogs/daily-blog/how-printer-dust-is-polluting-the-air
Only problem is size. Color lasers are chonky compared to a color inkjet. And a small printer is nice if you only print a handful of times a year. They’re easier to shove in a drawer or closer.
The days of me dedicating 24/7 desk space to a printer is over in my house.
I remember years ago seeing a list of the "most expensive liquids in the world", and black printer ink was near the top of the list.
Other things on the list were scorpion venom, cobra venom, crab blood, insulin, things of that nature.
Kodak is to blame for that. Printers used to be expensive and ink cheap but then Kodak flipped the business model and made a ton. Other printer companies were losing out, so they followed. I guess also blame falls on the consumers of that time for choosing that model as well
Funny, I had a Kodak printer for years since they had the cheapest ink by a large margin. HP was always the most expensive.
What year did that flip?
Looking into the history of Kodak is crazy. They used a 13 month calendar and secretly kept a nuclear reactor in the basement for years.
People forget that Kodak was a chemical company, not just photography.
That's good, but it pales in comparison to the effect we could gain by reducing the amount of paper that gets printed, especially in business.
Incredibly, a lot of time I spend is spent scanning shit that was produced using a computer, then printed, sent to me, only for me to then bring it back into a computer!
TIL ordnance and ordinance are two distinct words with distinct meanings
I don't want to be in the center of an ordnance drop. It's a statement of fact and a way to remember which of the words has an 'i' somewhere around the middle.
I'm in favor of ordnance targeting printers in general.
Refillable needs to be default
non refillable should have never existed!
I love the idea but I don't see how it will be enforceable. Companies routinely ignore California laws if they only exist in California.
This is just for city of Los Angeles, which is a small portion of Los Angeles county, let alone the entire state of California.
Excellent podcast on the issue : https://www.npr.org/2021/02/17/968704526/why-printers-are-the-worst
Which in practice will simply drive up the price: like refundable deposits
Seems like the headline and article itself are missing the main point
printer cartridges that can't be refilled or that don't have a take-back program offered by the vendor.
It may be barely mentioned but I read this are requiring a program to take back cartridges
Are there requirements for these programs? Or can they make it as onerous as possible to disincentivize usage of said program? (More rhetorical than anything)