Epson aims to set raise benchmark for sustainability with Green Report

Epson has launched a non-financial ‘Green Report’.

The Green Choice Report highlights Epson’s commitment to environmental, societal and product sustainability alongside concrete sustainability achievements from 2018.

There has been a 60% increase in ecofriendly inkjet printers sold in 2018, highlighting growing demand for sustainable products.

Epson aims to set raise benchmark for sustainability with Green Report

Epson Europe has released the “Green Choice Report”, a non-financial sustainability report that highlights the company’s ongoing commitment to environmental, societal and product sustainability. This report illustrates Epson’s goals in alignment with the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) and how it intends to continue reducing its European carbon footprint through an array of CSR initiatives, an increasingly eco-conscious product lifecycle, and increased alignment with the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs).

Epson’s daily investment of €1.3 million into R&D is designed to help further advance its own core technology platforms and the value it brings to customers with its wide product portfolio, from printers, scanners, and TCO-certified projectors, to robotics and smart glasses and more. Epson is focused on sustainability at every stage of its product lifecycle, from design and materials, to shipment and consumer use, right through to the re-use of materials. As Epson’s European footprint is mainly due to corporate activities, the Green Choice report is designed to highlight how not only its products are reducing energy consumption, but how CSR initiatives are being implemented to support Epson’s strategic goals around sustainability.

Daniel Quelch, CSR & Sustainability Manager for Epson UK & Ireland, says: “As a global OEM with a large corporate presence in Europe and a wide product portfolio that supports multiple different industries, it’s important for us to create transparency on the impacts we’re creating on the environment, so that we can learn and build on this, and also encourage other organisations to do the same.

Our commitment to sustainability is written in our management philosophy, which is why eco-conscious decisions are present not only in every stage of our product life-cycle, but across the decisions that we make on day-to-day basis. Our commitment to creating and promoting more environmentally-friendly products and our vision to be an indispensable company goes further than just providing our customers with cost savings – it is about passing on and encouraging real change”.

Epson began its sustainability journey in 2008 with the development of its Environmental Vision 2050, to demonstrate its commitment to sustainability with customer priorities in mind. Taking practical steps in 2018, Epson Europe committed itself to reduce its local environmental impact where possible.

Some highlights from the Epson Green Choice Report:

• All Epson European offices have taken the necessary steps to ensure all single use plastics will be removed from offices by 2020
• Increased renewable energy use to 55%, on target for renewable energy usage of 100% by 2020.
• Reduced CO2 emissions by Epson employees by over 6%, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions by almost 18% in warehouses, despite expanding both the employee base and warehouse footprint in Europe.
• Adding hybrid and e-cars to Epson’s car policy since April 2019
• Target of 19% reduction in business flights by 01 April 2025

The Green Choice Report also highlights the success of previous initiatives such as its robotics and textile printing programmes with universities, local school collaborations and international sponsorships.

Daniel Rafferty, Sales Manager at Epson Ireland, says: “It has become increasingly more important for companies in Ireland to be a part of the solution and demonstrate their commitment to sustainability. We’re not making claims to be at the forefront of sustainability but we’re putting the right measures in place across the board to ensure that our products, services and decisions represent the interests of the environment as much as they can.

Epson’s innovations, including the world’s first office based eco-system PaperLab, which turns waste paper into new paper, is another example of how other organisations can align their innovation with a vision for a sustainable future”.

In the world of print, where 20 years ago it appeared the market would be entirely saturated with laser printing, Epson was alone in committing to and investing in inkjet printing as it recognized that these printers were the most energy efficient product. The company’s commitment to this technology has resulted in traditional inkjet printing, which consumes up to 96% less energy than alternative laser printers, increasing across the market.

Epson’s inkjet printers are simple, no contact systems that deposit ink droplets on media without heating the ink, so they are durable and require only infrequent part replacements. As they do not use any heat, the printers consume very little energy. From 2017 to 2018 alone, the number of Epson Inkjet printers sold in the UK and Ireland grew by 60%.

“Sustainability is vital for the planet, but also for our business and our people. The process of non-financial reporting is very rewarding in evaluating where we are, where we still need to improve and how we can get there,” said Duncan Ferguson, Managing Director (Epson UK and Ireland) and Vice President for professional printing and robotics (Epson Europe), “We have and will continue to take this incredibly seriously”.

Epson’s first 12-colour professional photo printers: The SC-P7500 (24 inch) and SC-P9500 (48 inch). Wider colour gamut, better print quality, higher productivity and more enhanced reliability. Ideal for photographers, fine art production, photo labs, packaging & contract proofing pic.twitter.com/S5NpuRKl7L

— Epson UK (@EpsonUK) October 1, 2019

To find out more, download Epson Europe’s full 2018 Green Choice sustainability report here. Epson is the number one projector manufacturer since 2001, producing 5 million projectors a month and 25 million per year. The biggest purchaser of projectors are the education and government sectors. 100 million children are now learning with Epson products, as Epson now hold 30% market share of the overall education market.

@TeelingWhiskey to watch #IREvRUS courtesy of Epson Ireland for @Irish_TechNews

— The Tec Dr (@tecdr) October 3, 2019

See more articles about UN SDGs here.

More information about Irish Tech News and the Business Showcase

FYI the ROI for you is => Irish Tech News now gets over 1.5 million monthly views, and up to 900k monthly unique visitors, from over 160 countries. We have over 860,000 relevant followers on Twitter on our various accounts & were recently described as Ireland’s leading online tech news site and Ireland’s answer to TechCrunch, so we can offer you a good audience!

Since introducing desktop notifications a short time ago, which notify readers directly in their browser of new articles being published, over 16000 people have now signed up to receive them ensuring they are instantly kept up to date on all our latest content. Desktop notifications offer a unique method of serving content directly to verified readers and bypass the issue of content getting lost in people’s crowded news feeds.

Drop us a line if you want to be featured, guest post, suggest a possible interview, or just let us know what you would like to see more of in our future articles. We’re always open to new and interesting suggestions for informative and different articles. Contact us, by email, twitter or whatever social media works for you and hopefully we can share your story too and reach our global audience.

Irish Tech News

If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at [email protected] or on Twitter: @SimonCocking