Why does HP insist on wasting ink by printing an alignment quality page?

[WardJaycee]

HP Deskjet 4155e

Why does HP insist on wasting my paid for ink by printing an alignment quality page every time I add a new ink cartridge?

Why do ink cartridges only last a few letter-sized photo pages, and they cost $20 black and white and $40 color?

Why do I need to keep resetting all the parameters for each printed photo page?

Why does an ink cartridge when spent in the middle of a photo page, waste that page by continuing to print in weird colors?

Why does the spent cartridge have a no throw in the trash sign, but doesn't tell you what to do with it?

How about paying us for returning spent ink cartridges?

[Repairatrooper]

In regards to recycling cartridges, HP offers several options to ensure cartridges do not windup in landfills:

 https://www.hp.com/ca-en/hp-information/recycling/ink-toner.html

Depending on the type of printer, it may or may not be possible to accurately track remaining ink. Lower priced models are not going to have the same sophistication in supplies monitoring that expensive models do. Alignment and other utilities are designed to ensure good quality prints. If they did not do that, people would complain that they wasted ink printing an image that was not acceptable. Sort of a damned if you do, damned if you don't for HP.

As for cartridge size, same as the tracking, low cost printers will tend to have very small ink cartridges as a way of offering printing capabilities to people who do not print alot. If you print alot, a more expensive printer is probably more suited to your application.