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To facilitate sustainable management, Ricoh strives to promote environmental technology. As a part of these efforts, the Company established a new laboratory  the Environmental Technology R&D Center.
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Ricoh
has developed its own unique energy saving technology,
applied it to the Aficio 1035/1045 series, and marketed
in fiscal 2000. In fiscal 2001, Ricoh promoted its product
platform and module design and refined its recyclable
designs in an effort to improve profitability in the
recycling business. Also, the Company engaged in developing
products that encourage customers to reduce paper consumption.
In April 2002, Ricoh established the Environmental Technology
R&D Center to enhance its environmental technology skills.
At the center, relevant data and information from past
activities, including those concerning energy saving
and resource conservation, are compiled for use in developing
more profitable environmental technologies.
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Product Platform and Module Design |
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Ricoh is creating a product
platform and module design under the new corporate structure
to develop and market products with less environmental
impact in a more efficient and timely manner. The purpose
of this design scheme is to aid decision making on the
product platform (structure), modules mounted on and
sharing the platform, and modules used throughout the
product line and across generations. This plan is best
suited for "the era of the environment" because it allows
products to keep up with the changes of the times by
simply having the necessary modules updated.
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Recyclable Design |
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More-efficient reuse and
recycling can be realized by improving the disassembly
and sorting of products collected after use and choosing
materials that contain less environmentally sesitive
substances and are easily recyclable. In 1993, Ricoh
announced its policy on recyclable designs for significantly
reducing the time and cost it takes for recycling (e.g.,
fewer screws used in the machine and standardizing plastic
materials). Ricoh also expanded its policy on recyclable
designs and product assessment system to cover its entire
line of copiers, facsimiles, laser printers, and multifunctional
copiers.
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Recycling of Plastic Parts |
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In 1994, Ricoh began indicating
the exact type and grade of materials used in each part
according to the Company's recyclable design policy
in order to improve recycling quality. Plastic parts
removed from collected products are sorted, graded,
and crushed. They are then mixed with virgin plastic
to be reused in Ricoh product parts. Ricoh's recovered
plastic parts contain a relatively high rate of collected
plastic-up to 30%. The average amount of recovered plastic
in any given part is 20%-25%. In fiscal 2001, an Eco
Mark for printers was established. Eighteen types of
IPSiO laser printers, including those already on the
market, were awarded the Eco Mark mainly because of
the recovered plastic parts used in them.
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Rewritable Printers and Paper |
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| A rewritable printer and paper |
Ricoh, making the most of its exceptional thermal paper technology, developed a rewritable printer and paper that can be reused more than 200 times. The rewritable paper is very similar in texture to ordinary paper and can be written on using an exclusively developed red-colored pen.
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Reducing Environmentally Sensitive Substances |
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To reduce the amount of environmentally sensitive substances in products, the Ricoh Group worked together with suppliers in adopting lead-free solder, reducing the use of PVC-coated wires, and reducing the use of hexavalent chromium in steel plates.
Environmentally sensitive substances do not affect the environment when customers use them properly, but they may harm when they are mined or improperly disposed of. This is an important issue in recyclable designs as well because such substances may limit the recovery and recycling of used products.
Reducing the use of these substances will ultimately lessen recycling costs as well as the environmental impact a product has during its life cycle. Ricoh has taken on these challenges as part of its environmental management activities. The Aficio 1027 (imagio Neo 220/270), marketed in June 2001, reduced the use of lead in printed circuit boards, PVC-coated wires, and chromium-contained galvanized steel plates. Those products are highly evaluated in the Green Purchasing Network (GPN)* database in Japan.
*GPN provides information on eco-friendly products to promote green-purchasing approaches.
(Japanese language only)
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