Re: Playing the "Enviromentally Responsible" card
Contrary to assertions, paper is one of the nastier items to manufacture (quite nasty chemicals used) and has a very limited number of recycle uses (the papermaking pul[ing process chops wood lignin fibres up and it can only get "so short" before it no longer works as paper)
Coated paper is virtually impossible to recycle into anything except building insulation
In a lot of cases it's virtually impossible to compost too, thanks to the preservatives/dyes/varnishes added
The mantra is "reduce", "reuse", "recycle" - it's greener to not print at all and jumping straight to the recycling stage is the greenwashing way of assuaging a guilty conscience
Ink cartridges, on the other hand are just bits of plastic and surprisingly easy to recycle if they can't be reused (most can be refilled)
That said, the cost and energy expenditure of recycling most plastics (or paper) is so high that you'd usually expend 10% as much oil simply burning the old stuff as fuel and manufacturing new items from virgin materials
It's complex - and "recycling" only really works for a limited range of stuff.
In most cases it's a horrendous expenditure of resources. Plastics/paper in particular are extremely low value materials with a very high recycling cost - should we REALLY be spending 20p recycling a soft drink bottle that cost 2p to manfacture and distribute (and constitutes 0.1p worth of raw materials), into another 2p bottle or is it better to find a better way of dealing with it at end of life, or finding a better value proposition for the distribution of the content?