Initiatives for End of Life Products

The Ricoh Group has practiced resource conservation and recycling as one of the pillars of its environmental conservation activities since the early 1990s and has been developing global reuse and recycling initiatives for MFPs, printers, supplies, and consumable parts collected from customers by region and by product. In treating end-of-life products, the Ricoh Group offers electrical and electronic waste programs in accordance with the waste-related laws and regulations of each country (such as the European WEEE Directive) and strives to recycle them within each country. Furthermore, in accordance with the Basel Ban Amendment to the Basel Convention, the Ricoh Group have confirmed that no exports of electrical and electronic waste have been made from OECD member countries to non-OECD member countries for disposal and recovery. We will continue to maintain compliance with the Basel Ban Amendment to the Basel Convention.

In Japan, we apply a lease-based business model for MFPs in which we maintain a framework to track each unit, with our collection system tapping into it. We leverage the accumulated expertise from this setup in countries with varying business models. The Ricoh Group collects more than 300,000 end-of-life in-house products annually from around the world. Of these, approximately 50,000 are sold as reused or remanufactured products. We reuse parts or recycle materials from products that cannot be reused or recycled. Since 2010, our product design and technology divisions have helped us reuse functional components in periodically replaced units for imaging products. We will continue to make progress with initiatives internally and with suppliers and other business partners to broaden the scope of reuse and recycling.

The Ricoh Group has a programme for e-waste that complies with the laws and regulations of each country.

We deploy takeback programs, reuse, and recycling efforts through our own facilities in Europe, Japan, Americas, Asia, and China business regions. Each Group company maintains standards for selecting trustworthy industrial waste contractors.
These standards include such internationally recognized endorsements as ISO 14001, ISO 9001, R2, and e-Stewards.

Case Study in Japan (Japanese)
Reuse and recycling program in Japan (Japanese)
Audit of Industrial waste disposal company in Japan

Case Study in China
Remanufactured MFP business started in China (only in Japanese)

Case Study in Europe
Products recovery (reuse)

We have done much since the 1990s to cultivate our product refurbishment and reuse and recycling businesses, necessitating a range of efforts to make them viable. We have acquired many technologies and expertise over the years to commercialize product and parts remanufacturing. Sales of that business reached around 30 billion yen in fiscal 2022

2. Optimized Takeback, Remanufacturing and Recycling Sites
We reuse and recycle products, supplies, and parts that in our facilities in Europe, Japan, the Americas, Asia, and China regions collect from customers. The first step in remanufacturing products is to efficiently and reliably collect used products from markets. We set up 22 collection sites across Japan to streamline collections. We centralized remanufacturing at the Ricoh Eco Business Development Center in Gotemba to enhance efficiency. We have endeavored over the years to optimally locate sites and establish our current structure. One strength of our remanufacturing business is that this center engages in both remanufacturing and recycling. Necessary parts that we remove from used products that are impossible to remanufacture can become service or replacement parts for remanufactured products. We maintain a system to sell non-reusable parts as valuable recycling materials, minimizing costs by eliminating expenses and labor by shipping them to recyclers.

3. Reuse and Recycling Technologies to Optimize Quality, Cost, and Delivery
We established evaluation, diagnostics, disassembly, cleaning, washing, restoration, erasure, and recycling technologies to optimize quality, cost, and delivery in our remanufacturing business. Evaluation and diagnostics technologies are pivotal for generating earnings. Evaluation technology determines the reusability of used products based on assessments of their residual usability and other factors. It enables us to cut transportation costs by shipping only products that can be remanufactured from collection sites across Japan to the Ricoh Eco Business Development Center. Diagnostic technology assesses the conditions of prospectively reusable products. We categorize products in different conditions, putting them on reclamation lines by level to streamline production.

4. Collected Machine Management System Ensures Reliable Production and Sales Planning (Japan)
Product commercialization is an outcome of production and sales planning. Early in the product remanufacturing business, we found production planning challenging because we knew nothing of the timing and number of used products to be collected. We resolved that issue in 2005 by deploying a technique to forecast takeback volumes and establishing a recovered machine management system. We can now predict when and how many units of specific models that we will collect around Japan, enhancing production and sales planning precision.

5. Ensuring Quality and Data Security
Remanufactured products undergo the same quality assurance steps as new models and also need data security and other processes. With remanufactured products, for example, we need to fully erase hard disk drives through traceability management. The British Standards Institution, a global business standards body, has certified remanufacturing processes at Ricoh Industrie France and Ricoh UK Products since 2012.

6. Building a Global Structure
We have rolled out our Japanese domestic expertise and technologies at recycling sites overseas. In recent years, we have shared reuse and recycling technologies among recycling sites, including sales offices. We meet growing demand for used products by supplying recovered and remanufactured products from developed nations, where such volumes are high, to emerging markets in Asia and China* to balance global supply and demand.
^* In 2015, Ricoh became the first Japanese manufacturer to obtain approval from the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection, and Quarantine of China to import used products into that country for locally manufacturing recycled MFPs.

Toner containers for RICOH IM C8000/C6500 and RICOH Pro C5310S/C5300S are remanufactured without disassembly. We have launched a global initiative to remanufacture color toner containers, in which we collect some of the used toner containers returned by customers, clean them, fill them with new toner, and deliver them to customers again. In order to realize toner container remanufacturing, we have developed a technology for diagnosing the life of specific parts and a technology for cleaning the inside of the toner container without disassembling it. The annual reduction of new resources by remanufacturing toner containers is about 36t/year, and CO2 reduction is about 210t of CO2/year.