Green Procurement Activities in Partnership with Suppliers
The Ricoh Group promotes green procurement activities that place emphasis on partnership with suppliers. Green procurement refers to the procurement of raw materials, parts, and products with less environmental impact. Parts and products so designated are manufactured in plants that are advanced in environmental conservation. The purpose of green procurement is to reduce the environmental impact over the whole lifecycle of Ricoh products and to reduce the costs to the Ricoh Group and its suppliers by using resources and energy effectively.
Moreover, by establishing these activities, we aim to contribute to global environmental protection and reinforce management practices of the Ricoh Group and its suppliers. Ricoh's support for suppliers' environmental conservation activities is provided in three areas: resource conservation and recycling, pollution prevention, and energy conservation and prevention of global warming. As part of this support, we have assisted suppliers in building the foundations of their environmental conservation activities, namely environmental management systems (EMS) and chemical substance management systems (CMS) since 1998.
At present, we are focusing on supporting and promoting suppliers' CO2 reduction activities.
Suppliers' Activity Areas and Bases
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History of Green Procurement
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Activities |
| 1998 |
Started supporting the establishment of environmental management systems (EMS) at suppliers |
| 2001 |
Started a survey on environmental impact information (survey on chemical substances contained in products) |
| 2002 |
Commenced Ricoh Group's efforts toward the total elimination of environmentally-sensitive substances/Established Ricoh Group's green procurement policy |
| 2003 |
Completed environmental management systems (EMS) at 1,089 suppliers throughout the world |
| 2004 |
Issued Chemical management system guidelines for suppliers |
| 2005 |
Commenced educational activities for CO2 reduction at suppliers |
| 2006 |
Completed chemical management systems (CMS) at 734 suppliers (1,700 sites) throughout the world |
| 2007 |
Started supporting the establishment of chemical management systems (CMS) at second-tier suppliers and subsequent tier suppliers Started supporting CO2 reduction activities by suppliers (preliminary). Plan to commence the support on a fuller scale in 2008. |
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Establishing CMS at Suppliers  (Ricoh Group/Global)
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Audit of an upstream supplier (Thailand) |
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To ensure that products do not contain environmentally-sensitive substances, it is necessary to monitor the upstream manufacturing process at every step. To help establish a chemical substance management system (CMS) across its entire supply chain, the Ricoh Group commenced a program to train and certify supplier employees as CMS examiners in 2005. In addition to internal audits of their own companies, certified examiners will conduct audits at upstream second- and third-tier suppliers that deal with important processes involving environmentally-sensitive substances and will support them in establishing CMS.
As of the end of March 2008, 1,081 CMS examiners at 597 suppliers were certified, and the establishment of CMS was completed at all first-tier suppliers (1,823 sites of 909 firms) and at 136 second- and third-tier suppliers that are engaged in important processes involving the use of environmentally-sensitive substances, such as solder and plating.
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