February 28, 2008 10:32 AM PST
Kodak and Wal-Mart join forces to recycle
Kodak Picture Kiosk G4
Kodak and Wal-Mart are getting together to go green. Yesterday, both companies announced a joint recycling program for the thousands of Kodak photo kiosks located in Wal-Marts and Sam's Clubs. The program will recycle PETE plastic printer ribbons, spools, and cartridges from about 4,100 Kodak picture kiosks across America. The companies expect to recycle approximately 2 million pounds (or 904 metric tons, or 583 million pennyweights) of material from kiosks in the next year.
This program isn't Kodak's first green initiative. Nearly 20 years ago, the company began a program to recycle one-time-use film cameras. According to Kodak, the program has recycled more than 1 billion cameras to date.
The other issue Kodak need to fix is that any one time in the world up to 30% of these 85,000 on-demand kiosks are down are essentially dumb terminals, that are not network connected/deployed.