Comet Circle
The Comet
Circle is a graphic representation of a
society that recirculates resources. The
upper route represents the "arterial
system" while the lower one the "venous
system." The spheres in the diagram
represent the partners that comprise the
recycling-based society. Resources taken
from the natural environment by materials
suppliers shown in the upper right are processed
into products, moving from right to left
along the upper route, and are finally delivered
to users. The economic values of the resources
increase in the process and are the highest
when the final products are delivered to
users. The end-of-life products move from
left to right along the lower route. To
achieve a sustainable society that recirculates
resources, it is necessary to recycle products
on the inner loops of the Comet Circle and
promote recirculation that is highly economic
and
causes less environmental impact. Also,
the partners represented by spheres need
to reduce their own environmental impact
below the level that the self-recovery capability
of the natural environment can deal with.
Improving Sustainable
Management
To promote its
defined environmental management, the Ricoh
Group is promoting the development of products
with less environmental impact, contributions
to reducing environmental impact by customers,
and the profitability of the recycling business.
In the past, the development of a recycling
business did not succeed because the social
infrastructure was mainly based on the arterial
system. The Ricoh Group is making efforts
to turn the social infrastructure into one
that is based on the arterial as well as
venous systems and improve the standards
of recyclable designs to make its recycling
business profitable on a global scale.
Facilitating
Environmental Conservation through Partnerships
The Comet Circle
represents partnerships as well as the environmental
conservation concept of the Ricoh Group.
At present, customers decide what to buy
and which companies are more valuable to
them based on the product's performance,
which countries or regions these products
were manufactured in, and how they were
manufactured. The Ricoh Group supports its
suppliers and recycling companies in terms
of business improvement, quality improvement,
and environmental conservation. We also
actively develop and propose new products
to contribute to reducing the environmental
impact by customers.
Expanding Partnerships
To develop a sustainable
society, we need to expand our partnerships.
For example, we recycle waste plastic from
our products to be reused by ourselves and
other industries. In fiscal 2002, we succeeded
in manufacturing plastic parts using waste
plastic from polyethylene terephthalate
(PET) bottles, which are disposed of by
an outside industry. Also, we are starting
a new Zero-Waste-to-Landfill campaign based
on the idea of returning the natural resources
used in business activities to the natural
environment after use. This means that a
new concept -"from ecosystem to ecosystem"-
is added to the Comet Circle.
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