United Kingdom - 1994

Ricoh, provider of managed document services, production printing, office solutions and IT services, established the Comet Circle in 1994 as a catalyst for reducing environmental impact. It embodies the belief that all product parts, for example for copiers and printers, should be designed and manufactured such that they can be recycled or reused.

 

The company established the GreenLine label as a concrete expression of its commitment to resource recirculation, with an emphasis on inner-loop recycling. GreenLine is now offered in six major European markets and has quickly become a success story because it increases customer choice, while also keeping pace with Ricoh’s new equipment sales. According to Ricoh, GreenLine has grown rapidly (5% from 2012 to 2013), now accounting for 10 to 20% of Ricoh’s unit sales in these markets and earning a margin one-and-a-half to two times higher than Ricoh’s new products. GreenLine products allow Ricoh to reach non-traditional market segments such as smaller businesses, and make Ricoh’s offers more attractive for traditional enterprise customers, which helps stabilize market share in a market with heavy price competition. In addition to remanufacturing, the company refurbishes and upgrades pre-owned machines.

 

For products that cannot be remanufactured, refurbished, or upgraded, Ricoh harvests the components and recycles materials (at local facilities). Ricoh is starting to explore crushing materials to ship back to manufacturing facilities in Asia for use in new component production. The company is on track to reach their targets to reduce the input of new resources by 25% by 2020 compared with 2007 levels, and by 87.5% by 2050, and to reduce the use of—or prepare alternative materials for—the major input materials for products that are at high risk of depletion (e.g. crude oil, copper and chromium) by 2050.