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Ink gives Penn-Mar money, purpose [York Daily Record, Pa.]
(York Daily Record (PA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Dec. 10--YORK, Pa -- Charlie Nickel fixes printer cartridges for a living, but his life hasn't been written.
Doctors didn't used to think so. When Nickel was born 44 years ago with a mild intellectual disability, they wrote him off. They told his parents he'd probably never amount to much. Someone would always have to care for him.
Today, the White Hall, Md., resident helps run a printer-cartridge recycling business for Penn-Mar of Freeland, Md. It brings in about $7,000 a month to Penn-Mar, a nonprofit that supports 350 people with disabilities.
It also saves money for the Southern York County School District and York's city government.
Penn-Mar Ink collects spent inkjet cartridges. For about six hours a day, Nickel, a Penn-Mar client, cleans them, fills them with ink and tests their quality by printing lines on long, skinny pieces of paper. Then, Nickel and Penn-Mar repackage the recycled cartridges and sell them at a reduced rate.
In January, Penn-Mar plans to add toner cartridges to the recycling operation and move it to the company's offices on Susquehanna Trail in Glen Rock.
Southern York County School District has participated in the program since it started about a year and a half ago. Between then and July, the district bought 94 cartridges from Penn-Mar. Prices vary, but it's often 30 to 50 percent cheaper to buy from Penn-Mar than buying wholesale. That has meant a $2,054 savings for the district through July, said Mark Rill, the district's TV station manager.
Also, for every cartridge the district purchases, Penn-Mar donates money -- $1 for ink jet printer cartridges, $2.50 for toner cartridges -- to the district's scholarship foundation.
Penn-Mar placed four collection boxes in different spots throughout the school. Here, faculty and students drop off their empty printer cartridges -- whether they're from the school's supply or from their own personal printers. Penn-Mar clients pick up the items twice a week.
By July, the district had collected 1,480 cartridges.
"Many of the clients are former students of ours," Wayne McCullough, the district's business manager, said.
Nickel and five others pick up the cartridges about two times each week and sort them by type. At Penn-Mar's offices on Old Freeland Road, Nickel fingers stack upon stack of cartridges lined up in plastic bins by type. He fishes one out, takes it to a hulking brushed metal machine called the Inkjet factory. Here, distilled water flushes out the cartridge.
Then, Nickel injects each plastic container with ink and tests it to make sure the cartridge still meets factory specifications. If it doesn't, he starts over.
A computer touch screen serves as his controls.
"When I came in the first day, I didn't know what I was doing," Nickel said with his small, whispery voice. A navy lab coat with his name on the breast pocket brushes the floor at his heels as he moves from step to step in the process. "But the next day, I knew how to do it all."
"Charlie likes doing a bunch different things," said Kevin Walker, business development director at Penn-Mar.
Most of the time, Nickel operates the machinery. On other days, he works putting labels on the cartridges and putting them in boxes. Some days he works in the shop at the Markets at Shrewsbury, where he helps man the computers and handle taking orders.
"I don't let my disability interfere with my lifestyle," Nickel said.
The doctors who told his parents differently died years ago, Nickel said. He wishes they could see him writing his own life story with ink from the used-up printer cartridges.
"I think I really proved myself," he said.
Penn-Mar Ink customers
Below is a sampling of Penn-Mar's customers.
--- Kinsley Construction
--- Southern York School District
--- Glatfelter Insurance Group
--- Associated Administrators
--- The League for People with Disabilities
--- Keller-Brown Insurance Services
To see more of the York Daily Record, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.ydr.com.
Copyright (c) 2010, York Daily Record, Pa.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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