The never ending conflict between saving money & aving the planet has hit printer ink

[Katymac]

I need Hewlitt Packard inkjet cartridges

The cheapest way to buy is a 363 pack which has all 5 colours plus a black plus photo paper. I know have a shopping bag full of photo paper & pale pink/pale blue cartridges that I will never use

If I buy the 3 colours pack & the black separately it is about £5-£10 more expensive

So I have to waste all this stuff - it is frustrating and not very eco, but £10 on a £30 pack is a lot of money

Freecycle the rest?

What printer have you got? You can refill the ink cartridges on a lot of them - see link here
Or if you do a lot of printing then a Continuous Ink System like this (they do them for most of of the HP printers) is fab, you need to hack your printer a bit but then you just have a bottle of ink on your desk & refill it whenever it gets low.
Otherwise, could you give away the unwanted photo paper & cartridges? Someone's bound to want them.

Flog unwanteds on Ebay?

I guess

I have 2300 sheets of photo paper & 12 pale pink & 12 pale blue

I don't think I can refill - the cartridges have chips in I think

They do have chips in, but you can generally fool them by cycling through 3 cartridges (we just have them labelled A, B & C, & you put in the next in the line, so to speak)

Oh WOW that CIS looks good

WOuld it invalidate my guarantee? (if I does I just won't fit it until after the guarantee is up)

I guess it would - but they are great, we've had them on two printers now and its just sooo much better than messing around with refilling.

I have a photosmart C7200 so I'll have a look to see if I can do this CIS thing

I also like the cycling 3 cartridges - I'll have a look at that too

Have a search, there's lots of people out there on t'net trying to work their way round the endless tiny cartridges. We've had a 5150, 5652, and 8000, and we (well to be fair DH who is good at this sort of thing!) managed to get something as an alternative on all of them.

we buy recycled ones at work, and they take the empties (Epson I think) no probs.
also, I nearly always print draft quality=it's good enough for most things.
and use both sides of the paper of course