Initiatives for End of Life Products

1. Program

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. To prevent electrical and electronic waste from being exported across borders, we strive for domestic recycling and adopt programs in accordance with the waste-related laws, regulations, and conventions of each country (such as the European WEEE Directive) in which we sell our recycled products.
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.

2. Network（Global takeback programs, reuse, and recycling）

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.

3. Network utilization

Takeback for supply and parts

(Japan)
To promote recycling, we have introduced a collection and recycling system for replaced parts that occur during maintenance services. This system does not dispatch vehicles for parts collection, but loads parts collected from service bases all over Japan on the return line after parts delivery operated by SBS Ricoh Logistics and transports them to the recycling base operated by Ricoh.

(Europe)
Since 2012, Ricoh (in Europe) has added and strengthened a new collection scheme to increase collection of used supplies. Ricoh (in Europe) purchases Ricoh's supplies collected by 3rd party companies. As of Dec 2023, we are now working with 15 collection companies in 8 Countries across Europe, and plan to expand this network further. Through this effort, we will increase the amounts of supplies collection and promote our reuse and recycling.

Takeback by MFP industry Network

(Japan)
Ricoh participates in the recovered equipment exchange system run by the Japan Business Machine and Information System Industries Association (JBMIA).
Through this initiative, equipment turned in by manufacturers of copiers, MFPs and digital printers, including Ricoh, are collected at shared collection centers and returned to manufacturers, thus promoting the reuse and recycling of products in the industry overall.
There are 35 collection sites and nine exchange centers for collected machines from Hokkaido to Okinawa, covering all of Japan.

• JBMIA initiatives (Collection system) (Japanese)
• JBMIA initiatives (Sharing recycling facilities) (Japanese)

(Europe)
In France, 17 office equipment manufacturers including Ricoh France jointly invested to establish CONIBI and contracted recovery operations to this joint company. CONIBI has created its own free collection system and promotes the recycling of toner cartridges and consumables.

• Recyclage toner en entreprise

Reuse of resources through closed solvent reusing in the PxP toner (polymerized toner) production process

Reuse and Recycling Businesses

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

Key Commercialization Initiatives

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.

Reuse of full-color toner bottles without disassembly

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.

RICOH IM C6500 Toner bottles (front door open)

Audit of Industrial waste disposal company in Japan

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