Products:Resource Conservation / Recycling
–Recycling Business–

Recyclable design is an essential approach to promoting resource conservation and product recycling. To introduce recyclable design, an organization that is now known as the Committee for Environment-Compatible Design was established in 1993. The workshop formulated the company’s first recyclable design policy based on the Comet Circle, and has built up know-how in various areas, such as the grading of plastic molding parts, strength design considering future reuse as well as the reduction of packaging materials, the reuse of high value-added parts, recycling of high-quality materials, and improvement in the ease of disassembling and sorting. After designing copiers and printers, designers carry out recyclable design self-assessments to make necessary improvements, and in this way, the consideration of designers to recycling has already become a part of their core design process. In addition, we hold a recyclable design seminar to discuss how to deal with revised rules and new laws and regulations, targeting designers of not only Ricoh’s design division but also of its Group companies.

Samples of compatible
labels placed on products

Providing free access to patents in order to boost the efficiency of home appliance recycling

As part of its measures to manufacture recyclable design products, Ricoh developed compatible labels which do not compromise the quality and purity of recycled plastics even when parts are dissolved and reused with the labels still on. We have been using these labels as labels for products such as multifunction copiers and printers, as well as fax machines, since 1994. In order to promote the use of compatible labels for other home appliances, Ricoh signed a contract with the Association for Electronic Home Appliances in October 2009 to allow the association and its member firms free access to the relevant patents Ricoh owns. By having these compatible labels used in many home appliances, and by displaying the materials used in the labels, home appliance recycling plants can now eliminate the conventional process of removing product labels manually or punching them out by machine. This boosts the efficiency of the recycling process, and enables the recycling of high-quality materials. Ricoh expects that highly efficient plastic recycling using these the compatible labels will take root in Japan, and will contribute to the building of a recirculating society.

Reducing waste-processing time and cost by using compatible labels

The deployment of compatible labels has enabled us to eliminate the roughly 14 minute process of removing labels when recycling copiers (in the case of widely used models) and the need to separately dispose of the labels, thereby boosting work efficiency at the recycling stage and reducing processing costs. Due to these efforts, we first introduced products equipped with parts composed of more than 20% recycled plastic content in 1999. Building upon this achievement, we have since continued increasing the use of recycled plastics.

Samples of recyclable design

Ricoh copiers are offered mainly for lease in Japan, and every leased copier is placed under our management. This system facilitates the collection of used machines, and allows us to effectively utilize resources. The know-how accumulated through this practice is also made available in countries where the business model differs from that of Japan to help develop their recycling system. However, the collection of used machines requires energy- and cost-consuming transportation, and therefore, if collected products are not effectively utilized, collection will only create substantial losses. Ricoh has adopted resource conservation and recycling as one of the pillars of its environmental conservation activities since the early 1990s, and has been working on the recycling of collected copiers, laser printers, toner cartridges, and supplies. More than 200,000 units of our used products are collected each year, and fully recycled^* or reused. Furthermore, in order to continuously promote recycling, it is also necessary to create economic value from recycling. Ricoh therefore has been engaged in recycling copiers in Japan by collecting used machines and relaunching them back into the market. Since the release of its first recycled copier in 1997, Ricoh has expanded its lineup more actively than any other company to offer a wide variety of recycled machines with a copying productivity ranging—as of fiscal 2012—from 25 to 75 pages per minute. In 2009, Ricoh also released its first recycled full-color copier, the imagio MP C3500RC/C2500RC series. With this new series launched in the market, Ricoh’s recycled copiers are now capable of meeting a variety of customer needs with a wide selection of monochrome and color models.

• *The recycling rate of copiers is more than 99.5%.

In addition to product information from the procurement of materials to sales, the Ricoh Group also controls information on each office equipment unit after sales using the recycling information system. Ricoh’s recycling information system is an original traceability system designed specifically for collection and recycling purposes, whereby each unit collected is bar-coded to trace its status throughout the process. The conditions of copiers used by customers are also recorded in the monitoring database within the system. The system allows efficient production and quality improvement of recycled products due to its ability to manage on an individual unit basis, enabling identification of which collected items are currently going through which process. Used copiers are first collected by Ricoh’s local sales subsidiaries/dealers or our Green Centers located in 11 cities across Japan, and sorted by model and quality level at Aggregation Centers to determine whether each collected machine will be recycled or dismantled for parts reuse or material recycling. Only products that have passed rigorous inspections are finally sent to recovery centers. At recovery centers, used products are examined again to note their condition (quality, deterioration, etc.), and then disassembled, cleaned, and washed. Data stored in the hard disc is also erased. In the assembling process, deteriorated parts and supplies are replaced with new ones. Assembled products then go through paper feeding tests, fine-tuning, and a finishing process before being shipped to ensure they meet the same standards as those for regular products. The finished recycled products are provided with the same quality warranty as that for new products.

The Office Machine Production (OM) Division, a production department for Ricoh’s Imaging Solution business, succeeded in reusing highly functional components of PM units in fiscal 2010, as a result of making joint efforts with the product design and technology departments.
A preventive maintenance (PM) unit is a unit to be regularly replaced with a new one unconditionally—regardless of whether it has a problem or not. This unit had been recycled since 2007 but its functional components were excluded from the target of reuse because of their long operating hours and direct impact on imaging quality.
In order to make more effective use of resources and reduce waste, however, Ricoh also began recycling the functional components that met the following criteria by establishing the necessary methods and assessment technology for each of the components: (1) the functionality of recycled components must be assured; (2) the remaining life must be assessed; and (3) the recycling must provide a cost benefit.
For heating rollers (one of the functional components of a PM unit), our supplier manufactured them in China, making it difficult to recycle the used rollers in Japan. Upon a request from Ricoh, however, the supplier provided the company with detailed information, including a method to evaluate the electrical resistance of the products. The supplier also helped Ricoh procure the necessary tools and components for the testing and recycling of the used heating rollers within Ricoh’s own premises. Also, the OM Division and the product design and technology departments jointly evaluated the relationship between the remaining life of the heating rollers and the degradation of their functionality, and established a highly accurate remaining life assessment technology. As a result, heating rollers can now be recycled in large amounts, which will help reduce CO₂ emissions by 5.3 tons and waste by 4.9 tons annually, while at the same time reducing costs by 18 million yen.
The Ricoh Group is very grateful for the understanding and cooperation from the supplier. We will continue to conduct activities to increase the number of highly functional components that can be recycled and reused in close cooperation with our business partners and suppliers.