The ink cartridges in our printers are making a revolution

Jean Zeid 06:52, November 29, 2023

This Wednesday morning, the ink cartridges of our printers are undergoing a revolution.
In any case, this is the dream of Frédéric and Benoît Deschamps. Every year in France, 75 million ink cartridges are sold. Most of these 75 million cartridges are imported from Asia. And only 17% of it is recycled, with the rest ending up in incineration or landfill.
An ecological aberration that pushed the Deschamps brothers, co-founders of a computer hardware company, to explore this market. For them, this is an ecological aberration. They want to shorten the journey between the producer and the consumer. At the end of 2021, they created the website Lencre.fr
What do they sell on their site?
This online store offers a range of original, generic and refurbished printing consumables from France and Europe. Sale of consumables: toner and cartridges for laser and inkjet printers, ribbons for dot matrix and impact printers, and copiers. The Lencre.fr catalogue includes more than 6,000 product references.
How did they manage to reduce the circuit between producers and consumers?
Already, they have identified two French suppliers, Armor in Nantes and Lama in Lyon, suppliers who manufacture compatible cartridges and remanufactured cartridges in France. The company is also a partner of LAMA, a consumables specialist committed to environmental protection.
In addition to these partners located in France, L'encre.fr also has European suppliers.
Thanks to this more or less local network, the company avoids imports by sea or air, which are very costly in terms of carbon footprint. And it also allows itself to sell its cartridges on several online marketplaces. Their warehouse is located on the outskirts of Dijon.
Are these cartridges made in Europe cheaper or more expensive?
It's true that in addition to their environmental footprint, printer supplies are expensive. And the consumables of .fr ink, whether original, remanufactured or generic, are among the cheapest on the market, and the short circuit is not for nothing since everything has been done to reduce storage and transport as much as possible. But beware, if there is a revolution in the carbon footprint, there is no revolution in prices on the horizon.