Canon’s automated cartridge recycling system
The OEM has invested ¥60 billion in the new plant, which was opened in May.
Circulate News reported on the opening of the new inkjet and toner cartridge “reprocessing plant” in Japan, which saw the OEM invest ¥60 billion ($479 million/€428 million) in a new system providing a 50 percent increase in “throughput” compared to the previous facilities it had used. This means that the OEM can now “extract, annually, up to 3,000 tonnes of reusable materials from business-related equipment and 150 tonnes from home-use equipment”.
The new plant came on-line on 11 May, and was installed at the OEM’s subsidiary Canon Ecology Industry Inc. in Ibaraki prefecture. The subsidiary was installed as “part of Canon’s efforts to increase resource productivity”, and the new plant “initially pulverises” the cartridges, before extracting iron, aluminium and “other impurities”, with only granules of polystyrene resin left. These are then reused in the production of new Canon cartridges in the same region, at its factories there.
The subsidiary is said by the news site to support Canon’s Environmental Assurance Philosophy, which promotes a society based around the idea of ‘Kyosei’, or “the harmony between mankind and the earth”. The OEM attains this through “two key activities”, that of reusing “or recycling components and materials” from printers and cartridges, and the subsidiary also describes itself as Canon’s “vein factory” by transporting “used materials (blood)” for recirculation.
In March, The Recycler reported on the 25th anniversary of Canon Europe’s cartridge recycling programme, which has seen 344,000 tonnes of used toner cartridges recycled at Canon Bretagne SAS’ facility in France.