Environment – Simple Steps to Live Green

What You Can Do At Work

If your company has a paper recycling system, recycle your discarded paper.

Just over half of all paper in South Africa is not recycled – formal recyclers recover much of this material from dustbins and landfill sites – which is not ideal. Most employees are simply not thinking when they toss paper into the bin. A good amount of this paper might be recyclable – not disposable – as a wide range of paper materials can now be recycled.

For example, all the following papers can be recycled with the proper facilities: Computer, copier, printer paper, all white and colored papers, fax paper, adding machine tapes, tab and time cards, accounting ledgers, posters and bulletins, NCR carbonless forms, Post-It notes, magazines, mail order catalogs, newspapers, all types of envelopes including ones with windows, labels, coated and colored, all mail pamphlets and brochures, unwaxed cardboard, and manila or colored folders, and even the slip-off sleeves on paper coffee cups.

Tapping into this “urban forest” of discarded paper can greatly diminish South African’s ecological footprint. In the manufacturing process of recycled paper compared to virgin paper production, not only is less virgin forest destroyed and land converted, but:

• 74% Less air pollution is generated
• 35% Less water pollution is generated
• 58% Less water is required
• 64% Less energy is required

Print and photocopy double-sided (duplex) copies as the norm, and minimize single-sided printing and photocopying to absolute necessities.

It takes 10 times more energy to manufacture paper as it does to print and/or photocopy images on to paper. Hence, duplexing greatly reduces the carbon (greenhouse gas emissions) and ecological footprint relative to one-sided printing/copying.

In addition, when combined with copying two pages per side, the amount of paper used in photocopiers can be reduced by up to 75 percent. Such duplexing also reduces the weight and cost of mailing documents, as well as substantially shrinking the cabinet and floor space required to archive and store documents in bookcases and filing cabinets.

Konica Minolta‘s fantastic new range of workgroup printers will give you a full report on duplex / mono prints monthly enabling you to calculate green savings for annual reports.

Konica Minolta’s Managed Print Services – Colour yourself Green

Managed print services are an excellent way to manage resources within your company, to get an accurate audit of the amount of ink and paper that is used, to ensure that each department adheres to responsible printing practices, cutting down on waste and ultimately saving costs as well as helping the environment.

Encourage your office to purchase Greener Paper.

To lessen your impact on the environment it pays you to use green friendly paper. The ideal would be to use 100 percent post-consumer waste non-chlorinated paper. Although the cost may be a little higher than bleached virgin paper, the cost to the environment is significantly lower.

Yes, South Africa does have a recycled alternative. Sappi Fine Paper recently announced that it is supplying office paper manufactured using 50% recycled content and 50% virgin wood fibre derived from independently-certified and sustainable sources, offering end users an environmentally-sound choice without compromising on quality.

Use black-and-white Econo-mode computer printing settings for all draft copies, and avoid color printing unless absolutely necessary.

Additional energy savings and toner savings can be achieved by setting your printer default setting for eco-mode (typically the lowest DPI setting) for all printing of internal and draft copies.

The life of the toner cartridge depends on the amount of toner that print jobs require. When printing text at five percent coverage an HP toner cartridge lasts an average of 15,000 pages. (A typical business letter is about 5% coverage). Econo-mode can use 50% less toner, enabling twice as many pages to be printed.

Press the EnergySaver (or PowerSaver) button after photocopying, and check to see if the photocopier is turned off at the end of the day.

By pressing the EnergySaver button after photocopying you can significantly reduce the electric wattage consumed by photocopies normally left in the print mode. Checking at the end of the day to ensure it has been turned off will generate even larger electricity savings overnight and on weekends. Post signs above the copiers to remind staff, and if you walk by and hear the hum of a copier, that indicates it is in print mode, so hit the EnergySaver button.

In fax machines, use the other side of already-used, single-sided paper that was going to be discarded.

Many employees dispose of printer/copier paper that is clean on the backside and could easily be reused in fax machines or for printing draft copies of material. Other institutions like the World Resources Institute have implemented programs that recycle one-sided paper and dedicate certain fax and printer machines to just use this used paper. As a result, WRI paper consumption has declined by tens of percent.

Environment – Green by Design

At Konica Minolta, we’re constantly working to reduce our environmental footprint and improve its efficiency. Here are a few of the earth-friendly innovations we’ve developed to help stay green.

Simitri Polymerized Toner: Konica Minolta’s Simitri Polymerized Toner achieves an approximately 40% reduction in CO2 emissions during production, as compared with toners produced by conventional pulverization methods.
IH Fixing Technology: Konica Minolta’s Induction Heating (IH) fixing technology reduces power consumption during the fixing process and results in shorter warm-up time. Optimal Power Control: The power in Konica Minolta devices is optimized for each operating mode, eliminating wasted power. For example, when the C650/C550 are printing from a PC or receiving a fax, the power supply is adjusted so that no electricity is sent to the scanner or other idle sections.
Duplex Printing: When it comes to forest resource conservation, paper use reduction in offices is important; double-sided printing is an effective means of achieving such reduction. The bizhub C650/C550/C451 realize high-speed printing when outputting double-sided color pages, thanks to a paper feed control system that feeds three sheets alternately. This system offers productivity equal to single-sided printing, and makes it easier to reduce paper use in offices.
Toner Recycling System Original Toner Recycling: Our original Toner Recycling System collects, recycles, and re-uses toner that is not transferred to the paper during the printing process in MFPs. This results in saving 20% of the toner from going to waste without reducing image/print quality. Outer Casing Plastics: The outer casing parts for every Konica Minolta MFP are made from the same two types of plastic, creating a closed material-recycling loop for recycling plastics from end-of-life MFPs and incorporating them into the production of newer models. With this process, we have enabled the recycling of high purity plastics, recycling approximately 100 tons of plastics annually.