Our School Recycling scheme is so easy to do!

We specialise in recycling used printer cartridges. Our aim is to help schools raise funds and to encourage the next generation to get greener! We will collect your used printer cartridges and donate the money raised straight back to your school!

Register with us
Receive your recycle bins and recycle bags
Promote your scheme via social media, email, newsletters
Fill your recycle bin
Contact us when it’s full
Arrange a return
We process your bin
We pay you for the cartridges we can recycle!

‘FREE’ Eco gifts for your school …

Along side raising school funds we also run an ‘Eco Project’ designed to get your pupils outside and learning about their local environment and wildlife. As well as every £1 you raise we give you an additional ‘Green Point’ these points can be redeemed for ‘Green Goodies’ for your school, such as bulbs, trees, butterfly boudoirs, bird houses, hedgehog houses, bug boxes, toad hides, vegetable / herb seed packs, garden equipment, gardening tools, bird tables and feeders, bat boxes even sponsoring an endangered species of your choice and rain forest conservation projects too! There is so much to choose from!

Click here to view our current ‘Green Rewards’ list

Collect even more cartridges …

Cartridges can be collected from anywhere, school, home, work, clubs, friends and family.

If parents would like to take a bin to work on behalf of your school we can supply a pack for them to do so. This is a great way of boosting the money raised. You could also ask local businesses to display a bin for you, do you have a local shop, bank or business that could help?

What we pay for your printer cartridges …

We can now recycle ‘ANY ORIGINAL HP’ branded toner
We can now recycle ‘ANY ORIGINAL SAMSUNG’ branded toner

We also accept some ‘ORIGINAL BRANDED’ toners from Manufacturers Brother, Canon, Dell, Epson, Kyocera, Lexmark, OKI, Xerox and Ricoh. To see if we can accept your original branded toner, they must be on our ‘Toners Accepted for recycling’ list.

PLEASE NOTE! Unfortunately we are UNABLE to recycle –

Ink tanks of any brand (individual colour cartridges)
Compatible or remanufactured toner cartridges (Non branded cheaper alternatives to branded toners)
Waste toner powder containers / boxes / bottles (Click below to view some examples)
Drums and imaging units

WEEE Recycling / WEEE Directive 2016

If your cartridge is not on our price list, unfortunately we are unable to accept them at Empties Please, but you will still be able to recycle them;

Please visit your manufacturer’s website or contact your supplier for more information on recycling your cartridges through WEEE recycling. Inks and toners are now covered by the ‘WEEE’ directive and manufacturers / retailers have a legal responsibility to provide a return service for inks and toners that they have sold to ensure that they don’t go into landfill.

(Payments for returned recycle bins will be made for values of £5 and over. Any bins returned with a value of less than £5 will have the amount added to their account and paid once the balance has exceeded £5)

Empties Please team up with Eco-schools and Keep Britain Tidy

You can now run your Empties Please recycling scheme as your ‘Waste’ project, one of the Eco-schools 10 topics. There are 3 awards you can work towards, bronze, silver and the Green Flag Award. For more information on Eco-schools, please visit their website and get involved! – https://www.eco-schools.org.uk/

Testimonials from our schools …

We have been using empties please at our school for a few years now. The parents and staff know where the box is so it fills up steadily and with the online form it is easy to arrange collection and a new bin each time. We have raised £377 as well as helping recycle cartridges which is important as we encourage our pupils to recycle as much as possible. Becky Webster, PA to the Headship Team, East Sheen Primary School, March 2019

Friends of Bramham School has been recycling ink and toner cartridges with Empties Please since 2017 and have so far raised a wonderful £206.60. This money has gone towards new outdoor equipment for all the children to use. We encourage parents to ask their employers to save their cartridges for us, and we also promote this free fundraising initiative on Facebook within our local community. The children and parents want their school to pursue environmentally-friendly initiatives, so this is great as it raise funds too. We find Empties Please very easy to work with – it’s easy to find out which cartridges are recyclable, to request a collection and to order a new storage box – and the monies raised are sent straight into our bank after a collection. We have one parent volunteer who promotes and coordinates this scheme, and our other green fundraising initiatives. We are looking forward to raising more funds with Empties Please – and earning the chance to receive a ‘Green Rewards’ prize. Georgina Mills, Treasurer and Empties Please Co-ordinator, Friends of Bramham School, November 2018

After 3 years we have raised an extra £758.10 for our School PTFA. There is very little work involved, we just spread the word and advertise. We have put drop boxes in the school and doctors, these are filled regularly. We also ask local businesses to support this scheme.

The extra money goes a long way to supporting the school, our funds are spent on many things from reading books, to weather proof world maps for the playground and outside learning, to contributing towards the whole school annual visit to the Christmas Pantomime.

Using Empties Please is easy for us to facilitate as it takes such little organisation and arranging collections is simple to do. This scheme also helps with the environment knowing cartridges are being utilized rather than being discarded and adding to the mountains of waste. Catherine Hall, Chair Leven School PTFA, November 2018

Damers First School have been taking part in Empties Please since November 2017. It is a fantastic idea that has brought the children and their parents together to do their bit for the environment as well as raising some money for the school. The children have encouraged many businesses locally to collect their printing cartridges and toners and they drop them off at our school. The school has worked on a huge campaign all year to become a plastic free school. We achieved this Status in May 2018. We have raised £323 so far which has gone towards a bird hide in the school grounds. Edward Moore, Damers First School, Dorchester, July 2018

We encouraged everyone at school to try and get their workplaces engaged, but most importantly we posted the recycle bags through the letterboxes of villagers – we had a great response to our call to support our tiny school. I’d like to say how easy empties only made the whole process – I’ve been really impressed by the company and support. Many thanks, we’re delighted! Nikki, Thrussington CE Primary School, Leicester, May 2017

We are Beaudesert Lower School in Leighton Buzzard Bedfordshire, and have been registered with Empties Please since 2012. The whole recycling process is very easy to use, from registration through to returning the boxes of cartridges and then getting payment. We have placed our collection box in the school foyer and have some posters on the wall telling parents which cartridges can be recycled. We also send out flyers bi-annually in all the children’s bags to remind the parents that we are collecting and that anything donated can really help the school finances.

To date we have raised just short of £600 and our latest collection we raised £242! In 2014 we redeemed our green points and ordered a giant butterfly tower for the school and we are using our last cheque to help fund a Xmas Panto trip for the whole school this December. Beaudesert Lower School, Leighton Buzzard, October 2016

Perfect way for your PTA’s to make money from something that people throw away. Helps the planet by recycling the cartridges and toners and the school can benefit from the money and Green Reward Points that are earned when your total amount money is calculated. Green Reward Points are a great fun reward for the children. Once filled your full box of branded toners or cartridges is either dropped off at a local shop to be picked up by courier or picked up from school, it couldn’t be easier. Then just wait for the cheque! Since we started recycling in September 2014, we have raised £961.25. Mark Burge – Mayfield Primary School PTA, Lancashire, September 2016

We are the School Council at South Hykeham Community Primary School, which is near Lincoln. Our school accumulated quite a lot of points from recycling empty toner cartridges and we were given the opportunity to decide what we would like to spend the points on.

Having looked at what was on offer, we decided that adopting an endangered animal was definitely top of the list for us as we have learned a lot in school about the struggle some animals have to survive as a species.

In a School Council meeting, we decided that we would like to adopt a Black Rhino and when the adoption certificate, information all about rhinos and the very soft and cute cuddly rhino arrived, we asked all of the children in school to name it. The name pulled out of the box was Ralph which everyone thought was a great name for a rhino.

Ralph now has a very important role in school, as well as always being there for anyone who wants a cuddle, he is given to the class who recycles the most paper each week.

When we have enough points saved up again, we would like to adopt another animal. South Hykeham School Council, September 2015

“In just over 6 months we raised £258.50! Empties please has been one of the most successful fundraisers that we have ever been involved with. Thank you Empties Please!” Alison Wilkinson, Highfields Community Primary School, Nantwich, Cheshire.

“We take part in a number of recycling projects with great success but none more so than the initiative to recycle ink cartridges which we raised a staggering £146 for our first bin.” Sharon Barton, Leftwich Primary School, Cheshire

Recycling is important to us at our school and we have several recycling schemes that children/parents are keen to support. The most successful one is ‘Empties Please’ where we have raised £174.50 with our first bin within school. A few parents have also helped us to add to that total by signing up the company they work for which so far as raised £146.25, giving an amazing total of £320.75. We are delighted with this success, simply by recycling ink cartridges that people would just throw away, with a strong and clear message to all our children/parents of the importance and benefits of recycling.

Everyone within school has really embraced this scheme with many children coming and asking for more recycling bags. Several classes have run various topics emphasizing the importance of recycling all our waste, teaching children how waste can be remanufactured and converted into new materials, cutting down the waste which is sent to landfill. Our children are very keen to play their part in protecting the environment and we all enjoy the benefits of being able to raise money for school too.

‘Empties Please’ provide everything you need to run this successful and vital recycling scheme and your school can play a part in protecting our environment with the added benefit of raising much needed funds for school too. It’s so easy, just give it a go!

Thank you Empties Please, we look forward to continuing with this project for many more years! Christine Sowerby, PTFA Chairperson, Darton Primary, March 2013