Printing and imaging OEMs and solutions providers are discovering the business case for environmental initiatives.
The detritus of the Digital Age is starting to pile up, and now printing and imaging vendors and solution providers are seeing new opportunities for increased customer service and programs that fortify ties with end users.
Recycling programs are no longer just about newspapers and plastic Snapple bottles. Decommissioned electronic hardware, including printers and toner cartridges, are becoming prime targets for environmentally safe disposal efforts, as concerns grow over mercury, lead, and other toxic materials that reside in some devices. In addition, new recycling programs are now able to separate plastics and metals so they can be reused by manufacturers to create new products.
"In the next several years there's going to be a lot more visibility in this area," says Gary Gillam, vice president of channel operations for Xerox. Xerox ties its proprietary solid-ink technology to green concerns by saying it is non-toxic and produces 90 percent less waste than laser printers that rely on toner cartridges.
Green messaging from vendors will benefit from the help of solution providers, OEMs add. "Solution providers will play the important role of informing customers about printer recycling programs," says Steve Daniels, product marketing manager for LaserJet supplies at Hewlett-Packard and manager of its Make the Upgrade and Save program, which pays rebates for recycled printers and multifunction products.
Already, some printer dealers are adopting green marketing strategies. Midwest Computer Products prominently features the details of HP's Upgrade program, including the amounts of the rebates available for the various printers and MFPs.
A slew of new legislation is helping to spur green sensibilities in the printing and imaging market. A number of states, including Maine, Maryland, and Washington, now require manufacturers to offer "take back" programs for discarded hardware. California's Electronic Waste Recycling Act charges consumers fees ranging from $6 to $10 per device to create a fund for collecting and recycling electronics.
Two industry trade associations, CompTIA and the Consumer Electronics Association, are both pushing for federal legislation to promote the reuse and recycling of electronics.
Electronics recycling efforts in the U.S. could continue to grow as worldwide programs take hold. The European Union's Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive requires EU countries to establish collection and processing systems.
But OEMs in the U.S. aren't waiting for federal laws before they create their own recycling programs. HP's longstanding Planet Partners initiative promotes inkjet- and laser-cartridge recycling by distributing labels for free shipping of the used products back to HP.
The more recent Make the Upgrade and Save program targets printers five years or older, a class that totals approximately 8 million units, Daniels says. "The goal of the program is to encourage printer users to upgrade to a more-efficient device and then recycle the old ones in an environmentally favorable way," he adds.
When customers buy certain color or monochrome LaserJet printers or MFPs they're eligible for the rebate when they use a pre-paid shipping label to return their old devices. Any printer or MFP qualifies for the rebate, no matter what brand it is or its working condition. Customers who buy a color LaserJet 4730 MFP receive $1,000 for their old unit, while less expensive HP purchases, such as the LaserJet 2015x monochrome printer, see a $120 rebate.
Daniels says that HP pays between $30 and $50 in shipping and handling fees for the obsolete printers and MFPs, plus another $30 in recycling costs. Some, but not all, of these expenses are recouped when HP sells recycled plastics and metals to materials brokers. "We see recycling programs as a competitive advantage," he says. "It's good for business and good for the environment."
Once the printers and MFPs reach the commercial recycling center, the California-based contractor breaks them down into component parts. It disposes of hazardous waste and sends the rest through a series of giant grinders that shred the materials into thumbnail-sized pieces. These pieces then flow to a materials separator.
Daniels says HP recycles a total of about 4 million pounds of electronics components a month, and its total recycling efforts have processed about 1 billion pounds of materials over the last nine years.
Software vendors are also looking for ways to make printing and imaging greener. Preo Software uses the marketing tagline "saving money and trees one page at a time" to promote Printelligence, which lets solutions providers and end users automatically enforce print management strategies. The application analyzes the printing costs of each printer or MFP in an organization, as well as usage patterns, to determine the most efficient output device for each job.
GreenPrint Technologies offers a same-named application that reduces printing waste by showing users previews of their print jobs, and highlights overruns, boilerplate disclaimers, and other potential waste. End users can then select only the relevant sections of the job for the final printout rather than expending paper and consumables on elements that will end up in the trash can. "There's a clear business case in terms of savings in paper, ink, and time," says Hayden Hamilton, GreenPrint founder.
He cites a study by Lexmark that looked at cross-industry printing practices and determined that a typical business user prints a total of 10,000 pages a year. Of these, 1,100 a year, or six pages per day, are waste. "We extrapolated the numbers and estimated that business people generate about 80 billion wasted pages per year," Hamilton says.
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