I would like to see cartridges designed ecologically - refillable perhaps, or at least designed to flow as much out as possible - and allowing you to override the "toner low" warning and keep printing even if it's almost dry.
Beware that toner dust is really nasty stuff and gets everywhere, so however careful you are you'll still have clouds of toner dust escape and stick to every surface of your house inside and out...
Top tip:. Never clean toner dust with warm water. It will stick and become permanent.
The best thing for cleanup is a 3M electronics vacuum which has a filter that will trap that stuff securely.
Basically I'd still steer clear of them, but exposing yourself to them isn't a certain death sentence like say organic mercury.
You might also need to adjust the fuser temperature for non-oem toners
Of course you can order things printed online and shipped, but a black-and-white laser covers most of my needs there.
I’m pretty sure my Canon inkjet uses more ink when idle than when I occasionally use it to actually print something. Quite sad.
I do wonder where it all physically goes tho. After years of seeing my cheapo cartridges just “evaporate” whatever reservoir the printer has for cleaning the heads and purging ink must be well and fully saturated at this point?!
A contributing factor could be that the best-before date on the bottles is in the past. Though I have no idea how that date would matter for filling up, and no idea how to observe it after the ink is in the printer and the bottles disposed of.
Most times a company will lease several multi-function printers from a manufacturer like Ricoh. These lease agreements come with a certain quantity of toner replacements included or discounted. Most also include service agreements, because they don't want you servicing a unit you do not own yourself.
When you have one of these agreements, you are supposed to send the empty toner back to the manufacturer. I have no doubt at all that they refill these and sell them as brand new units. Honestly, it would be an absurd waste if they didn't.
So think of it as a "Blue Rhino propane tank" which are notoriously not filled to capacity from the factory either. They don't give a crap how much product is in the container to begin with or when you return it. They only care that you return it as that increases their profit margins.
Advantages: waterproof print; very clean; easy to change ink blocks; maintenance was mainly just emptying a tray containing small amounts of waste wax (biodegradable)
Disadvantages: when offline, the printer still used power to keep the wax in a liquid state, otherwise a cold start could take a while; colors were occasionally not as vibrant as regular laser printers
Main disadvantage was the smell when it was warmed up. It had to be kept in a ventilated separate room.
It smells like slightly burnt, melted wax. Very much like a candle, including the smoke...!
I think they were meant for one-off proofs of image-heavy marketing material. The colours were intense and vibrant, in a way that no colour laser or ink-jet ever is. Also, the wax stood a bit proud of the paper, giving an embossed look. But they weren't very permanent - if you folded the printout you'd damage the image; you could even scratch the wax off with a fingernail.
These were expensive printers.
However, the internals of the cartridge will break down over time. Typically it's the "blade" that evens out the powdered toner that wears out, leaving too much toner stuck to the page and results in those gray-page prints and streaks/lines.
If you buy refilled cartridges, the blade seems to be the most common failure point long before you run out of toner.
They used to be in some applications (like really big photocopiers). But toner is messy nasty stuff to deal with. Maybe refillable at a shop could work though.
This is the protip my living room wished I knew.