The OEM has collected roughly 344,000 tonnes of used toner cartridges.
The programme takes Canon cartridges, collected from European customers, to Canon Bretagne SAS in France, where through “a combination of reusing parts, recycling materials and energy recovery, no waste from Canon toner cartridges is sent to landfill”. Canon was the first OEM to set up such a programme in 1990. It now operates in 24 countries, 18 of which are in Europe.
By the end of 2014, Canon had saved around 232,000 tonnes in raw materials and about 502,000 tonnes of CO2.
After launching its PC-10 and PC-20 in October 1982, which the OEM says were the “world’s first personal copying machines to incorporate replaceable all-in-one toner cartridges”, the cartridges used were “adapted” for use in laser printers, “rapidly gain[ing] in popularity”, and in line with what the OEM says is its corporate philosophy of ‘kyosei’ – “living and working together for the common good”, it launched the recycling programme, which it claims was a “watershed moment” for the industry.
Other environmental claims it makes include reducing the “use of new resources” by 220,000 metric tonnes and CO2 emissions by 480,000 metric tonnes. To celebrate the 25 years of operation, the OEM will expand recycling eco-lesson visits to Japanese elementary schools, which will feature an “experiment involving the separation of materials made of plastics and metals”. This was also presented at the Eco-Products 2014 exhibition in Japan in December 2014.