The Hidden Costs of Home & Office Printing – And How to Cut Them in Half

From buying paper to topping up your ink cartridges, maintaining home or office printers can come with some hefty operating expenses. These have to be taken into account when evaluating the cost-efficiency and sustainability of your printing habits.

But alongside just buying your office supplies, there are other less obvious, less overtly measurable cost factors for home and office printing that are all too easy to overlook. We’re talking about energy consumption rates related to unit wattage, time and labour costs associated with printer network set-up, diagnostics and troubleshooting, and the growing economic considerations of printer cartridge manufacturing, which relies heavily on using materials and resources that are growing more and more scarce.

Yes, the hidden costs of home and office printing are really beginning to climb, which means that even if you have calculated your printing costs in the past, there’s a very strong likelihood that these figures have grown outdated. So how can you maintain a stronger understanding of what you’re spending per print? And how can you actually reduce that overall spend for your household or business?

Our team at CartridgesDirect are here to answer these questions today by delving deeper into all the hidden costs of home and office printing, and providing our best tips on how to optimise these costs.

Why are Printers so Expensive to Operate?

Whilst the retail prices for printer units may be lower for home printers and even some office printer models, most modern printers can still be expensive to operate primarily due to the growing cost of printer consumables like ink or toner cartridges. Higher cartridge costs adds to the overall cost per page for your printing jobs.

Similarly, printers and printer cartridges are manufactured with many intricate components and moving parts so much like a combustion engine car, your printer will also need to be maintained to keep it operating optimally and with minimal maintenance costs.

Thankfully, modern printer manufacturers have begun integrating printer diagnostics functions into most multifunction printer models, so consumer-ready home and office printers aren’t as likely to need third-party maintenance and diagnostics anymore. However, the inclusion of this smarter technology has also made multifunction or all in one printers a little pricier too. It’s a small price to pay, however, for a printing unit that can print, copy, scan, fax, and run its own diagnostics testing with minimal fuss.

Biggest Cost Factors for Home and Office Printing

Outside of printer model pricing, here are some of the major cost factors that impact your overall printing costs.

Printer ink cartridges

Home printers that are valued at under $100 AUD may oftentimes have compatible printer cartridges valued at the same price – per cartridge! So even if your printer only sets you back $100 AUD, restocking your cartridges could end up costing 3-4 times that amount every few months.

This is why it’s imperative you don’t just look at printer model prices when buying a new printer. You can also save some serious money in the long run by making sure you only buy printer models with cartridges that are readily available and have lower retail price points.

Printing paper

How much does your household or business spend on a ream of printer paper? And how long does it take you to get through that ream? If you don’t know the answers to these two questions, then you may be spending unnecessarily on paper for your printers. 

Thankfully, this cost factor is easy enough to manage. All you have to do is monitor your printer paper purchases, both across frequency and cost. If you’re spending too much on printer paper but have higher printing needs, then consider looking for lower cost printer paper.

The same goes for photo paper. From HP’s Zink paper to Canon’s branded photo paper and even third-party products, there’s a wide range of premium photo papers available on the market today, so it shouldn’t take more than a little shopping around to find the best deal for you.

Printer running costs

So how much energy does it take to power home printers? Believe it or not, but according to data from Energy Use Calculator, most inkjet printers use between 30-50 watts during print jobs, and about 10% of that (3-5 watts) when left in standby mode. Laser printers can actually use even more energy, reaching 600 watts or higher during print jobs and when warming up. 

This is why more modern inkjet printers are being developed to include power-saving modes that aid in reducing energy consumption while your unit is idle. 

Labour and time investments

This one is more for SMEs and business owners. If you’re setting up printing networks for a commercial office space, then chances are you’ll be investing in infrastructure installations. This means running printer cables, setting up office WiFi networks for WiFi printing, and integrating printer training, restocking, and maintenance into your operational processes.

Printer-related technical issues can also utilise a large share of in-house or even external IT support resources. For this reason, proactive printer maintenance is an absolute must for reducing the overall cost investment of office and industrial-grade printers being set up and installed in your office space.

Pro tip: if you’re after enterprise printing solutions, create an account with CartridgesDirect to enjoy special offers for business owners, including the ability to set up subscription orders for easy, autonomous restocking, as well as the opportunity to receive exclusive email coupons directly to your inbox.

Eco & Economical: Greener Printing Habits to Cut Costs & Carbon

Home and office printing waste is so substantial that it really is a silent environmental crisis. Depleted printer cartridges are more often than not tossed directly into landfill waste despite being made up of highly sought after recyclable and reusable materials, including metals like stainless steel, silicon, tin, and zinc. 

Plastic waste from dumped printer cartridges can also pollute waterways – even if they are sent straight to landfill. These economical and ecological concerns are the driving force behind our printer cartridge recycling program, that allows CartridgesDirect customers the opportunity to ethically dispose of their used printer cartridges at no cost for them and with minimal effort.

But eco-conscious printing practices don’t just help to save turtles – they’re also great for saving your own money too, namely by ensuring your printing costs stay as optimal as possible.

Opt for double-sided or duplex printing

Alongside being able to keep your printer paper consumption lower, duplex printing is also ideal for reducing energy consumption for your home and office printer and printing practices. Not only will your carbon footprint be lowered by maintaining shorter, more efficient printing jobs, but duplex printing also allows for further emissions reductions by saving paper.

Believe it or not but the global paper industry accounts for approximately 6% of industrial energy use worldwide, and 2% of direct industrial CO2 emissions. And it makes sense when you consider all the offices across the globe that are using printer paper as we speak. It’s amongst the most in-demand resources, and its manufacturing process uses so many different chemicals and materials processing methods to create uniform paper textures and sizes. When you get to thinking about all that energy being wasted on an incorrectly printed document, opting for double-sided prints and even using spare or recycled paper becomes a no-brainer.

Proofread documents before printing

Another no-brainer, but something that should be mentioned regardless. You can curb your paper and ink waste substantially by just making sure you print documents correctly the first time round. This means performing spell check functions in your Word docs before you press CTRL + P and send your document to the print queue. 

By proofreading your documents prior to printing, you can not only conserve your printer resources, but also maintain greater control over your home or office carbon footprint.

Opt for higher yield printer cartridges

High yield and ultra high yield printer cartridges are always going to be more environmentally friendly than standard yield cartridges for an elegantly simple reason: more prints per cartridge means less plastic waste per print. 

Of course, having your ink cartridges dry up is always going to be a concern for printer users who invest in high or ultra high yield cartridges and then find that they can’t use all their printer ink in time before the ink hardens. The good news here is that storing your ink cartridges correctly can help greatly reduce your risks of ink drying out before you’ve been able to use them. With some mindful office and storage design, you can make sure your high yield and ultra high yield cartridges can be stored for longer and with little to no ink waste.

Invest in a continuous ink printer

Also known as ink tank printers, continuous ink printers use high-volume ink bottles over traditional ink cartridges, allowing printer users to enjoy substantially higher page yields with every ink purchase – we’re talking potentially thousands more pages per ink top up.

The drawback? Continuous ink printer units do often have higher retail price points, as the ink tank technology requires precision manufacturing when compared to traditional cartridge compartments. 

Invest in a dedicated sublimation printer

If you’re looking to secure a sublimation printer specifically for sublimation printing, then you’ll know that sublimation ink dyes cannot be cross-contaminated with traditional printer ink used for photo or document printing. This means that anytime you use a sublimation printer for sublimation printing, you’ll need to flush out the print nozzles entirely before you use that same printer with traditional printer ink. That’s a lot of expensive and specialty ink going to waste! 

This is why it just makes good economic (and ecological!) sense to invest in a dedicated sublimation printer for sublimation printing jobs. And when you’re ready to find the ideal sublimation printer to complete your workspace, then be sure to check out our top sublimation printer recommendations to help guide your buying journey.

Print using draft mode

Also often called ‘economy mode’, printing your documents using draft mode settings on your printer can actually help save on ink or toner alongside speeding up the printing process, which in turn, helps reduce energy consumption during print jobs. 

Draft mode is also designed to reduce the number of passes made by a printhead during print jobs, which doesn’t affect the quality of simple printing jobs like document printing. Basically, if your print jobs don’t include intricate detail, you can use draft mode with confidence to keep your energy and ink consumption consistently low. 

Recycle printer cartridges to curb material scarcity

The cost of printer cartridges will only keep climbing if printer manufacturers don’t pivot to closed loop manufacturing processes. Why? Because the metal materials and other resources used to manufacture the different technical components of printer cartridges are in increasingly high demand. The scarcer these materials are, the greater their cost value, and these price increases across raw materials trickle down as increased retail prices to consumers.

Ethical manufacturers like HP are working to rectify material scarcity by introducing closed loop systems that allow them to use post-consumer recycled materials. HP’s sustainability mission helps ensure that their cartridges maintain a minimal carbon footprint when compared to other printer manufacturers.

How to Calculate your Printing Costs for Eco Monitoring

The easiest way to calculate your printing costs is by assessing the costs of your printer ink cartridges in relation to the costs of your printer paper and your overall page yields.

You can learn how to calculate your printing costs by evaluating all three of these cost factors and using the following formula: 

Cost of cartridge ÷ page yield + cost per paper = printing cost per page

Let’s not forget about those pesky hidden cost factors either, however! For improved eco monitoring of your printing costs, we recommend assessing your home or office energy consumption rates and utility costs, comparing both before you’ve implemented the eco and economical methods we’ve outlined above, and after those changes have been implemented. That way, you can gauge the full efficacy and impact of your green printing shift.

Take Control of your Home & Office Printing Costs with CartridgesDirect

It takes a decent amount of resources to get the most value out of your home and office printers, no matter whether you’re printing documents, photos, or creating your own textiles and product designs using sublimation printing methods.

Being mindful of the resources you’re using and how you can keep your printing practices greener and leaner can help you maintain greater control over your printing costs, alongside ensuring that your printing practices don’t end up costing the planet either.

At CartridgesDirect, we consider ourselves experts on smart printing methodologies. Our extensive experience and knowledge of all things home and office printers have allowed us to make tailored tech recommendations to valued clients across all their varying printing needs. So whether you’re operating a business or enterprise or you’re simply looking for the ideal printer for your classroom or even your home office, we’ve got you covered.

Want more inside tips and tricks on how to maximise the value of your printer purchases? Check out our printing guides and other resources across our website, or simply get in touch to speak directly with one of our stellar customer support specialists.