On average, 70 percent of used ink cartridges are thrown into landfills, where it will take over 1,000 years for them to decompose, according to tonerrecycle.net. 'When something is tossed in the garbage and either landfilled or incinerated, the value of that material is lost forever,' Lauren Taylor, the Global VP of Communications for TerraCycle, says. 'When an object is recycled, it provides a more circular solution.'