How printing innovations can drive climate action

It’s been a busy year for the Epson com­mu­ni­ty. And while we con­tin­ue to ride the waves of the pan­dem­ic, togeth­er with our resellers, the biggest threat to our plan­et is still qui­et­ly and con­sis­tent­ly matur­ing in plain sight.

For Epson, our respon­si­bil­i­ty to ensure we are adapt­ing with grow­ing envi­ron­men­tal demands has nev­er been clear­er and the last year has been a tes­ta­ment to this. In Feb­ru­ary, Yoshi­ro Naga­fusa was announced as the new pres­i­dent for Epson Europe B.V. and this was short­ly fol­lowed by the intro­duc­tion of Epson 25 Renewed, our new glob­al cor­po­rate vision out­lin­ing ini­tia­tives for solv­ing soci­etal issues in the new nor­mal. This coin­cid­ed with Epson’s renewed Envi­ron­men­tal Vision 2050, com­mit­ting Epson to reduc­ing car­bon emis­sions in line with the 1.5°C sce­nario by 2030, com­mit­ting to 100% renew­able elec­tric­i­ty by 2023, and invest­ing 100 bil­lion yen (approx. £650m) on decar­bon­i­sa­tion before 2030, to name a few.

In May this year we announced a new part­ner­ship with Nation­al Geo­graph­ic to pro­mote the impor­tance of heat-free tech­nolo­gies as a pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sure to per­mafrost thaw­ing and the sub­se­quent impli­ca­tions this has on cli­mate change. Those unfa­mil­iar with print­ing tech­nol­o­gy need only check the warmth of the paper after it’s been print­ed to recog­nise how a heat-free alter­na­tive is a kinder solu­tion for the envi­ron­ment.
Lat­er in the year we also announced a new Euro­pean-wide part­ner­ship with icon­ic ath­lete Usain Bolt, who is help­ing us to edu­cate a wider audi­ence on the ener­gy and waste-sav­ing ben­e­fits of car­tridge-free print­ing.

In June, Epson was select­ed for inclu­sion in the FTSE4Good Index Series for the 18th con­sec­u­tive year, and in Octo­ber Epson received its sec­ond con­sec­u­tive plat­inum rat­ing by inde­pen­dent asses­sors Eco­Vadis, plac­ing us in the top 1% of com­pa­nies in the indus­try for sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

More recent­ly, Epson was named as the most sus­tain­able com­pa­ny in Japan by Forbes Japan mag­a­zine and, at the begin­ning of Novem­ber, Epson became the first com­pa­ny in the Japan­ese man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­try to con­vert to 100% renew­able elec­tric­i­ty for all its domes­tic sites.

But com­ment­ing on the high­lights is noth­ing if we’re unable to pro­vide more tan­gi­ble infor­ma­tion on how we’re pro­gress­ing against our greater com­mit­ments, includ­ing our sci­ence-based tar­gets, which is why Epson Europe has just launched its lat­est Green Choice report.

A glob­al spot­light on Glas­gow

We had the priv­i­lege of being in Glas­gow for COP26 where we met with part­ners, as well as mem­bers of the edu­ca­tion and pub­lic sec­tors, to under­stand the tra­jec­to­ry of envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty in Scot­tish edu­ca­tion, and how tech­nol­o­gy can help. Key take­aways from this were clear. First­ly, edu­ca­tion should be fur­ther opti­mised to teach stu­dents how to make prac­ti­cal con­sid­er­a­tions around cli­mate change, and the tech­nol­o­gy sec­tor has an open invi­ta­tion to play its part in sup­port­ing this. Sec­ond­ly, envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty should play a more crit­i­cal role in the buy­ing cri­te­ria from pub­lic sec­tor organ­i­sa­tions and the envi­ron­men­tal impli­ca­tions of tech­nol­o­gy should be made clear­er to those that are using them.

Polls we ran on social media ahead of COP26 revealed that 46% of peo­ple believe man­u­fac­tur­ers should be tak­ing the most respon­si­bil­i­ty for Scotland’s fight against cli­mate change, while a sep­a­rate 46% believed this should be the pub­lic sec­tor. The major­i­ty (55%) said more renew­able ener­gy was the biggest improve­ment need­ed in Scot­land to tack­le cli­mate change, while only a quar­ter (25%) said they were reduc­ing their ener­gy con­sump­tion in order to address the cri­sis. For me, this only rein­forced our respon­si­bil­i­ty as a ven­dor to dri­ve aware­ness around ener­gy-effi­cient solu­tions and the fact that we should nev­er stop chal­leng­ing the sta­tus quo for what more we, as both busi­ness­es and indi­vid­u­als, can do to tack­le cli­mate change.

Mak­ing incre­men­tal changes

What’s been clear over the last two years is that the tech­nol­o­gy indus­try, includ­ing those of us in the print world, has made dra­mat­ic changes to over­come the chal­lenges that were immi­nent­ly thrown at us with the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic. But for many, it’s clear it will take anoth­er Covid-sized event to realise sim­i­lar change for the envi­ron­ment.

At COP26 we came across numer­ous tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tions designed out of neces­si­ty for tack­ling the cli­mate cri­sis. Clever inven­tions specif­i­cal­ly designed to help get us out of this mess. But, for the vast major­i­ty of the indus­try, we have to adopt rather than rede­fine our solu­tions in order to ensure lega­cy tech­nolo­gies that peo­ple still need can con­tin­ue their place in the world with­out com­pro­mis­ing the envi­ron­ment. And despite my pas­sion for what I do, I know that print­ers aren’t going to save us from cli­mate change. But what we can do is offer a solu­tion that pro­vides an incre­men­tal ben­e­fit to the envi­ron­ment which also per­forms as well — if not bet­ter — on cost and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. The high­er the vol­ume of incre­men­tal changes that busi­ness­es make across dif­fer­ent indus­tries, par­tic­u­lar­ly tech­nol­o­gy, the more col­lec­tive suc­cess we can har­ness in reduc­ing our car­bon foot­print.

A key exam­ple is Epson’s busi­ness inkjet tech­nol­o­gy. The char­ac­ter­is­tics that make this a dis­rup­tive inno­va­tion are the same char­ac­ter­is­tics that make it kinder to the envi­ron­ment. Com­pared with its indus­try alter­na­tive — laser print­ing — busi­ness inkjet has longer-last­ing, high­er ink yields that reduce the costs from cus­tomers spent on ink, but also the fre­quen­cy and emis­sions from the recy­cling process. It requires few­er com­po­nents to assem­ble it and there­fore there are few­er things that can go wrong, mean­ing less inter­ven­tion for the cus­tomer and a reduced car­bon foot­print from send­ing engi­neers across dif­fer­ent busi­ness­es to fix the hard­ware.

Busi­ness inkjet also con­sumes up to 83% less ener­gy than laser, reduc­ing ener­gy costs for the end-user and the lev­el of CO2 emis­sions released. If all busi­ness­es across Europe switched from high-ener­gy laser to Epson’s heat-free busi­ness inkjet tech­nol­o­gy, they could save enough ener­gy annu­al­ly to pow­er 800,000 elec­tric cars for a year, cut €152m in ener­gy costs and low­er CO2 emis­sions by 410 mil­lion kilo­grams, an amount it would typ­i­cal­ly take 19 mil­lion trees a year to absorb.

But how can a ‘print­ing com­pa­ny’ be envi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able? Like every good organ­i­sa­tion should, we rel­ish the chal­lenge of how to bet­ter adapt around the chang­ing needs of the envi­ron­ment. The role of paper, as just one exam­ple, still has a very impor­tant role in the future work­place. Through our print­ers, we estab­lished that the pro­pri­etary Dry Fibre tech­nol­o­gy we cre­at­ed to devel­op the porous pads used in our print­er main­te­nance box­es can also be used to recy­cle the every­day office paper into new paper. With this, we cre­at­ed Paper­Lab, the world’s first in-office paper mak­ing machine. Paper­Lab is now being sold across Europe and is a tes­ta­ment that, with the right inno­va­tion, man­u­fac­tur­ers needn’t com­pro­mise their val­ue propo­si­tion for cus­tomers, but rather inte­grate sus­tain­able solu­tions into it.

The appli­ca­tion of our Dry Fibre tech­nol­o­gy has fur­ther poten­tial in pack­ag­ing mate­ri­als, and also for pro­duc­ing the nutri­ents to cul­ti­vate the microal­gae Eugle­na to pro­duce bio­plas­tics. The oppor­tu­ni­ties for how we then put this into prac­tice are end­less, and all stemmed from an inno­v­a­tive approach to the print­ed paper.

Final thoughts

As we look for­ward to a new year and to over­com­ing any final chal­lenges thrown at us from the pan­dem­ic (and beyond), my mes­sage to deci­sion-mak­ers is to advo­cate change. The cli­mate cri­sis is becom­ing increas­ing­ly per­son­al to some, yet remains a fleet­ing con­sid­er­a­tion to oth­ers. But, by and large, employ­ees want to be proud of their organ­i­sa­tions and to know that we’re address­ing a cri­sis that will only con­tin­ue to out­weigh the threats of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic. Envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty won’t mag­i­cal­ly appear on the par­a­digm of cus­tomer-buy­ing incen­tives. But if every work­ing pro­fes­sion­al put even half the ener­gy and con­sid­er­a­tion they do into reduc­ing costs and time for their organ­i­sa­tion, just think what they could all achieve for reduc­ing CO2 emis­sions, waste, and con­tribut­ing to a green­er plan­et.

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it epson.co.uk/heat-free

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