Who he is: Roy Pelton

Where he works: Imagerite colour production plant at 30 Troop Ave. in Dartmouth, N.S., located in the Burnside Industrial Park

What he does: Senior Technician
–Colour Plant

For the past eight years, Roy Pelton has been taking apart empty toner cartridges, replacing and recycling components and then reassembling the cartridges so they can be reused by customers of Datarite.

Although he’s too modest to admit it, the work he does is similar to that of a surgeon: he first must identify what needs to be repaired, then, with steady hands and sharp eyes, perform an “operation” that will breathe life back into anywhere from eight to 10 cartridges a day.

“I’m good with my hands,” Roy will say, crediting a background in carpentry as being helpful. “There’s no course in this; you learn on the job. It takes problem-solving skills. To figure out what’s going on with each cartridge, you have to understand what the parts do.”

Imagerite is Datarite’s own brand of toner and ink that offers customers a significant savings over the high cost of the original-equipment manufacturers’ products. Imagerite has been locally owned and operated in Atlantic Canada for close to two decades. Since March, Roy has been working in Imagerite’s new colour production plant in Burnside.

With environmental issues on everyone’s minds, Roy values the part of his work that involves recycling and reusing. “It’s important to me that you don’t throw good things away,” he says. “There’s an expense involved in dumping everything into the landfill. When we sell a new cartridge to a client, the expectation is that they’ll return the empties to us. That happens most of the time.”

Roy works on about 10 different types of cartridges, and he likes the variety. He also likes the energy of his team. “We’re pretty easygoing here,” he says. Above all, he takes pride in his work: “In a sense, I’m a craftsman. You have to have the mind-set that you want to produce quality in a reasonable amount of time.”