Kent-Sussex Industries (KSI) has provided employment for hundreds of disadvantaged people since 1962, including in remanufacturing toner cartridges.
Two of its employees are Susie Dorow and Derek Eliason, who both work in the remanufactured toner cartridge service department, refilling around 90 different brands of cartridge, Dover Post reported.
Eliason, 20, said he started with the company two years after finishing high school: “I was just taking a little break until I decided I was ready [to work], and my mom said I had an interview coming up over here at KSI and I was like, ‘All right. I’m looking forward to it.’”
Dorow moved to Delaware, where the company is based, from Michigan five years ago, and her job is to test the cartridges, puts them in boxes, seals them and put labels on them.
She likes being busy and so has found the KSI role is the “perfect job” for her, after volunteering for a year and a half at the CHEER center in Georgetown, a soup kitchen for the elderly.
Some KSI employees start out putting products together for industrial equipment businesses such as Fastenal, while others box and stick pallets of bottle for brewing companies, with the team handling a “quite diverse” product list.
Employees are paired with supervisors who work closely alongside them and determine when they’re ready to advance to another position.
Alicia Hollis, Director of Community Relations, said the toner cartridge department is a sort of “graduation” for many of its employees who begin with small tasks and then build up to the more challenging department.
“Everybody has their individual plan,” Hollis said. “One might say, ‘I want to go to Proctor & Gamble,’ and in order to do that they have to get to where they can stand for eight hours a day. We’ll start with maybe a half hour standing a day for a week and build them up. It’s all individual-centered.”