Green Product Lifecycle

Konica Minolta Business Technologies strives to improve the recyclability of digital MFPs. Products are designed taking recycling issues into consideration to enable easy removal of recyclable parts and resources from used products such as toner cartridges and outer casing plastics. To standardize such recycling-conscious designs, we have created a “Recycling Practical Design Manual” and the entire company is working together to promote this initiative.

Konica Minolta Business Technologies is working on closed material-recycling, which involves collecting outer casing plastics from end-of-life MFPs and incorporating them into new models. To promote recycling, all outer casing parts for all MFP are made from the same two types of plastics. We focus particularly on the recycling of outer casing plastics which require high levels of appearance quality, strength and flame resistance. We have installed crushers for plastics at our recycling facilities and reinforced the foreign matter removal mechanism for recycling, enabling the recycling of high purity plastics. As a result, approximately 100 tons of plastics are recycled each year.

The Konica Minolta Group has established a free collecting and recycling system for used toner cartridges in Japan, 18 European countries, the U.S., and Puerto Rico. In the U.S. and Europe, this system is called the “Clean Planet Program.” In Japan, we collect used toner cartridges and drum cartridges from all our laser printers with no minimum quantity requirement for the service. Under this system, customers simply call Konica Minolta’s Collection Centre (free phone) and pack the used cartridge in the newly-exchanged cartridge box, which designated service agents then collect. Through this free service, which minimizes the burden on customers, we aim to increase the recycling ratio of used cartridges.

In Japan, the Konica Minolta Group has implemented a “Program to Collect Used Laser Printers and MFPs,” under which we take responsibility on behalf of corporate customers for the collection and recycling of such products, thus significantly reducing the amount of work associated with industrial waste disposal activities, including the preparation of manifestos. We provide this service under the authorization of the Ministry of the Environment in accordance with special regulations to certify industrial waste disposal manufacturers for wide-area recycling under the “Waste Management and Public Cleansing Law.” Overseas, we conduct activities tailored to the regulations and circumstances in each market. In Europe, for example, measures are undertaken in compliance with the EU directive on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE).

We are promoting the reduction and recycling of packaging materials on a worldwide basis. Konica Minolta Business Solutions (UK) Ltd., has succeeded in reducing their used packaging landfill waste to zero. A recycling station known as "greenhub" at their central warehouse plays a key role in carrying out such initiative. At greenhub, cardboard, shrink packaging film, palettes, and other packaging is separated according to material, then mechanically compressed or shredded and handed over to a recycler or are recycled in-house.