Xerox diverts waste from landfill

Xerox Corporation has announced that it has surpassed a major sustainability milestone by diverting more than two billion pounds of electronic waste from landfills around the world through waste free initiatives that create sustainability benefits for the company and its customers.

Launched in 1991, Xerox’s environmental programme has achieved the two billion pound milestone by waste avoidance in two areas: reuse and recycling in imaging supplies and product take-back and parts reuse. In addition, Xerox integrates environmental priorities into its manufacturing operations.

“Xerox’s experience with reuse, recycling and remanufacturing has not only kept waste out of landfill, but saved the company more than $2 billion in the process,” said Patricia Calkins, Xerox Vice President, Environment, Health and Safety. “If that amount of waste were loaded into garbage trucks, it would fill more than 160,000 trucks, stretching more than 1,000 miles, from Seattle to the Mexican border. We believe sustainability is an integral part of developing products, serving customers and posting profits.”

Xerox Green World Alliance
Central to the company’s commitment to waste free products is the Xerox Green World Alliance, a reuse and recycling programme for printer cartridges and toner. The programme kept more than 2.7 million cartridges and toner containers and nearly 11 million pounds of waste out of landfills last year alone.

The Alliance is composed of two components – the remanufacturing of cartridges and the recovery and reuse of toner. When a cartridge is at the end of its life, customers send it to Xerox, which then cleans, inspects and remanufactures or recycles the cartridge. Remanufactured cartridges contain an average of 90 percent reused/recycled parts and are built and tested to the same performance specifications as new products.