Blair and Lesa Humes opened a Cartridge World franchise last year in Port Orchard. The independently owned and operated business collects spent cartridges, remanufactures and fills them back up with ink. According to Blair Humes, consumers can save up to half the cost of their ink buying these products — not to mention recycle toner and ink cartridges that would otherwise end up in the landfill.

“We break down the product and use raw materials to rebuild it,” he said. “We’re producing like-new product.”

The couple, who’ve lived in Gig Harbor for 15 years, have owned other businesses together previously. Blair is a retired Merchant Marine and Lesa has a corporate retail background. They chose the Port Orchard area because their target market is small- to mid-size business, and they see Kitsap County, and Port Orchard in particular, as having greater potential for growth for those types of enterprises.

Humes said they were looking for a business that offered a new concept and a new type of service, and were attracted by the Cartridge World model because it offered savings to the consumers, as well as ways to contribute back to the community. The business offers a fund-raising program for schools, churches and other groups, which receive actual cash back for the cartridges they collect.

“The fund-raising aspect is somewhat unique to the industry. Not a lot of people seek out to pay for a product people would be throwing away otherwise,” he said, comparing it to the concept of collecting used cooking grease from restaurants to make biodiesel.

According to Cartridge World, a laser toner can take up to 450 years to decompose — and nearly eight cartridges are tossed each second in the United States, which means more than 350 million cartridges per year end up in the landfills.

Increased awareness by consumers has prompted even the big names like Hewlett Packard to promote cartridge recycling, and many cartridges now come packaged with postage-paid envelopes for returning the used ones. Humes says while that does keep the product out of the garbage, it also takes the money out of the area. “The difference between sending them in (to a big company) is sending the money out of the community,” he said.

The couple plans to open two other outlets in Gig Harbor and Silverdale, while keeping the manufacturing production in Port Orchard. The Silverdale store is planned for opening by the end of the year.

In the meantime, they are focused on building up their work crew. The business opened last summer, and has been fully operational for about five months once they’ve refined their techniques and procedures, but in February the co-owners were wearing all the hats including production. Humes said they hoped to hire technicians soon — so they can be geared up for the next growth stage.