Page 12 - st4_sum09.indd

0870 903 9500

Steve Hewson, Toshiba Marketing Director

Energy efficient stoves in Kenya

The

Carbon Zero

MFP

Toshiba has become the first MFP manufacturer to make all its devices and the first million pages printed on each one carbon zero.

Like most printer and MFP manufacturers Toshiba has taken great strides to reduce the environmental impact of its products throughout their lifecycle, from manufacture to recycling at end of life.

New devices like the e-STUDIO455 and e-STUDIO855 series are designed from the ground up to consume as few resources as possible. They are smaller, more compact and have fewer components than previous generations; they use long-life consumables to

minimise waste; they are designed to simplify maintenance and recycling at end of life; and, above all, they consume less energy than older devices. In addition, Toshiba provides customers with the software tools and productivity features needed to implement green printing practices: from two-sided printing at the rated engine speed to network scanning for electronic workflows and software controls that enable administrators to monitor and restrict MFP usage. Despite these advances, printing pages – like any activity – has an environmental cost. Valuable resources are used to make the devices, ship them, service them and then recycle them at end of life. Throughout the active usage phase of their lifecycle, MFPs consume electricity, toner and paper, each of which has its own carbon footprint.

Toshiba believes it is important for businesses to reduce unnecessary printing. However, it also recognises that printing is a consequence of doing business.

To find out what could be done to neutralise the effects of unavoidable printing, it commissioned voluntary carbon offset provider co2balance to calculate the lifecycle carbon footprint of a Toshiba MFP and the pages printed on it and then work out how much it would cost to offset the equivalent amount of CO 2 by funding carbon saving projects in the UK and developing world.

After doing its sums, co2balance came up with a figure split evenly between the cost of offsetting the MFP and the cost of offsetting one million prints. The cost is the same for a small desktop MFP as a large production machine because although the former will require far fewer resources to make, it needs more to print one million pages.

Toshiba felt that it could easily absorb this cost over the lifetime of a contract and therefore decided automatically to make all MFPs sold directly to commercial customers after July 1, plus the first one million prints, carbon zero. Customers can choose to buy bolt-on packages to offset the carbon from the second million prints. The co2balance offsets are also available to Toshiba resellers who can choose either to pay the cost

cover story