As part of its policy to promote sustainable development and profitable growth, Bidvest company, Konica Minolta South Africa, is integrating environmental, economic and social perspectives into its business strategies. The organisation's latest step in this mission has been to sign up ISO 14001 certified electronic recycling company, Desco, in order to establish a reliable recycling programme for itself.
"From an environmental production process point of view, Konica Minolta South Africa not only delivers environmentally conscious products, we are also assessing the environmental impact at each stage of a product's life cycle, right through to recycling and disposal," explains Paul Symonds, product manager at Konica Minolta South Africa.
Konica Minolta operates an internationally recognised ISO 14001-based environmental management system, and is committed to helping prevent global warming from an overall product life cycle perspective, by reducing CO2 emissions from business sites during product manufacture, as well as during product distribution, the sales stage and product use.
Says Symonds: "Konica Minolta also has a zero waste goal, where the company is trying to reduce waste in both resources and costs, as well as using all acquired resources efficiently and trying to reduce the volume of externally discarded waste by implementing internal recycling. From a local standpoint, our appointment of Desco will provide us with a one-stop service for the recycling of 'e-scrap', with the assurance of technology protection and environment-conscious recycling methods."
Konica Minolta is also continuously working to reduce the environmental footprint of its products while improving efficiencies. This strong commitment is carried through via its Simitri polymerised toner, which achieves around 40% reduction in CO2 emission during production over toners produced by conventional pulverisation methods; induction heat (IH) fusing system, reducing power consumption during the fixing process; optimal power control by optimising electric power for each operating model and eliminating wasted power; and duplex printing, minimising paper use in offices while maintaining high-speed printing.
"All materials used for the bizhub multifunctional printers (MFPs) are either recyclable or recycled," says Marianna Gdanis, digital colour product manager at Konica Minolta South Africa. "In addition, the bizhub MFPs offer two power saving modes to reduce the energy consumption during idle phases. Both modes start automatically according to the time setting.
"All Konica Minolta environmental activities are part of the general management philosophy called the Creation of New Value," she adds. "This New Value not only includes pioneering products with intelligent features, but also describes the permanent search for new ways of protecting the environment. Of course, this means that eco-friendly technology and behaviour is a very dynamic process, which depends on latest scientific results."
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