Canon Celebrates 25th Cartridge Recycling Anniversary

The Canon Toner Cartridge Recycling Program will celebrate its 25th year in operation in 2015, and now covers 26 countries across the world, and the OEM revealed that in December 2013 it had collected around 320,000 metric tonnes of used toner cartridges for recycling since 1990. Four global bases are used to collect and recycle the cartridges: Canon Ecology Industry Inc. in Japan; Canon Dalian Business Machines, Inc. in China; Canon Virginia, Inc. in the United States of America; and Canon Bretagne S.A.S. in France.

After launching Canon PC-10 and Canon PC-20 in October 1982, which the OEM says were the "world's first personal copying machines to incorporate replaceable all-in-one toner cartridges", the cartridges used were "adapted" for use in laser printers, "rapidly gaining in popularity", and in line with what the OEM says is its corporate philosophy of 'kyosei' – "living and working together for the common good", it launched the recycling program, which it claims was a "watershed moment" for the industry.

Other environmental claims it makes include reducing the "use of new resources" by 220,000 metric tonnes and CO2 emissions by 480,000 metric tonnes. To celebrate the 25 years of operation, the OEM will expand recycling eco-lesson visits to Japanese elementary schools, which will feature an "experiment involving the separation of materials made of plastics and metals", and this will also be presented at the Eco-Products 2014 exhibition in Japan later this month.

Source: The Recycler