The biggest problem with higher end printers are on the long tail. I have a very nice Samsung laser printer. Networked, has duplex printing, fast, 3000 page toner and 9000 page imager with all replaceable rollers and everything.

The thing is, it was built jointly with Xerox, and Samsung sold the division to HP. It's almost 10 years old, and can easily live for a decade more, but finding toners and imaging units become harder and harder.

If these kind pf printers take off with much longer lives (and HP claims 50K pages with a single drum), the companies can support all their fleets with a single sack, indefinitely (in theory). Since there is less electronics, precious metals and plastics to produce and ship, it'll be also cheaper.

I don't want to change devices because they are old. I want to use them as long as they run, and with global warming and pollution, everybody is moving to less-waste methods.

I also run a HP 4515 "Web printer". All web services are deprecated, but it has mDNS, and everything can print wirelessly with no drivers. HP app enables me to print my photos after cropping them or scan directly to my phone. Otherwise it behaves like an old USB MFP which works with all desktop apps pat.

Addenda: The unit is not used frequently, so I change toners really rarely now. Because of that, I want to stick with OEM refills as far as I can go. Knowing a little about inks and toners, their quality shows them on the long run. So, I don't trust an aftermarket toner to print archival documents. Same for the inkjet.

I, too, am fond of the Samsung laser printers of yore. They are one of the very few laser printers that have a simple paper path and the built-in provisions to print on heavy stock. At the time, perhaps 4–5 years ago, the toner cartridges were about $35–$40 and lasted a good long time. About two years ago, I went to buy toner and the price was $135 and they were out of stock.

I ended up replacing it with a Brother.

I think the idea is to reduce (its reduce, reuse, recycle in order of preference) as a bag of toner needs less resources than a cartridge.

The internet indicates a 5k page cartridge costs ~5kg of CO2 to make, and each trip to the recycling center costs ~1kg of CO2 (rough average cost of shipping a package).

A 5k page pouch in a box weighs 0.2kg, assuming a 4x weight->CO2 cost (high end of plastic production), it comes out to 0.8kg of CO2 per pouch. This is less than the CO2 cost of shipping back the cartridge for recycling.

If you assume the cost of return shipping and recycling is free, the cartridge will need to last >6 times to be worth it from a initial cost perspective. The figures I can find on cartridge lifetimes is 3-4 recycles before they are too worn to recycle again.

Even though its single use, its still a net win from a lifecycle perspective.

If you’re the kind of party that prints so much a 5000 page toner bag is worth the effort, you’re not going to be returning single toners to HP. You get a big box and send 50 at once.

Also you should be aware a lot of those toners include some other roll that has a limited life, which means you can’t recycle (or refill) them forever. But if you get toner from a bag you’d have to replace the roll separately anyway. This might be skewing your figures.