Most plastics are white or transparent. The colours are an added ingredient requiring more suppliers, more storage, more credit, more equipment, and an extra production step.

https://www.quora.com/What-colour-is...y-dye-is-added

The most common plastic is Natural Polyethylene Terephalate (PET), which is transparent. Drink bottles, bubble wrap are ultra-cheap and transparent.

I suspect black dye is added to ink cartridge plastic to make the item look cleaner and more desirable.

http://g01.a.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1VCoXL...Ink-b-font.jpg

If you search google images you can find many aftermarket transparent examples. They seem to come from China.

To prevent old ink drying out inside the cartridge, I suspect the fresh inks are packaged into vacuum sealed bags. If I am right, then the bag scrunches up as ink is removed. It is near impossible to estimate the contents of a deformed (and effectively painted) bag and it would look ugly.

Not the case if it's recycled.

Polyester isn't that cheap when you consider that most of the cost of bottled spring water is the bottle. PET bottles have to pass local food quality standards, many other plastics used in consumer electronics don't.

Consumer electronics usually make heavy use of polymers/copolymers such as HIPS or ABS rather than polyester/PET.

Plastic waste is a pollutant and pollution is a physical debt that we leave for future generations to clean up. By this measure, the UK and USA have been in continuous economic decline since the 1970s*. The name for the cheapest long-term solutions is 'sustainable development', but that is a new concept that few governments have subscribed to. For example, current official economic figures and forecasts ignore the cost of cleaning up pollution. Probably, the most sustainable solution is to ban ALL plastics

* according to leading academics.

This is about toner and not ink -- they are completely different technologies.

Edit: Relatively transparent toner cartridge.

Also, one kind of toner is not another kind and one kind of ink... but, who cares! Printing should be illegal you troglodytes...

https://www.homesciencetools.com/a/m...de-ink-project

Despite the fact that I would be out of a job if it were (or, perhaps because I would) I do tend to agree.
I wonder what the environmental cost of paperwork versus everyone using tablets and sharing wirelessly when required is?
I recently read an article on our intranet about a guy who's worked for something like 50 years in toner -- that is, in fields related to toner not being covered in the stuff for 50 years.

That's a pretty good reason...

That is ink though and not toner.

Coal miner's (especially we) are better off too, if their future is considered... paper and ink is for art not work‽

Come on kill 2 trees or run some solar and wind power,,, LIKE TREES DO‽


https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...ar-4175478854/
&c...

Speaking about black laser toner. The pigmentation is carbon based, so it is one on the most photo-stable pigments around. I'm not sure how photo-stable the binders in xerography ink are, but I would suspect that an hour of direct sun exposure would not effect the binders.

On the other hand I suspect that a transparent would not be helpful, because I suspect that enough particles would be statically bound all inner surfaces. Thus it would be looking through a clear bottle that is coated in a layer of black paint. Remember, xerography works because the particles can be attracted by static electricity.

Aha! But the particles aren't charged until they reach the developer. As evidenced by the clear toners I linked to in a previous post where the toner leaves the bottle simply due to gravity and the screw-shape of the bottle.
Not that there isn't some truth in what you say as the toner does stick to the bottle a little and to the rest of the device as it passes through.

I'm not saying that percentage-wise a lot of toner is stuck to the inside of the cartage. However I suspect that at least 0.5% (perhaps a bit more) of the toner is stuck to the inside of the cartridge and will never get utilized (ie. it will get thrown out when the cartage is "used up"). As far as economics are concerned there may only be small wastage. But, what I am saying is that black toner is so dark that even the 0.5% will make window useless, because you will be not able to see into the cartridge.

It has been a few decades ago, but I remember having loose black toner , and I remember it was incredibly messy. I forgot how it got out, but remember the mess.